ESI’s Community Data Analytics (CDA) team recently presented in New York City at the 2017 American Planning Association National Planning Conference. The team led two independent sessions, and also participated in a poster session.
CDA Project Lead, Dr. Sidney Wong accompanied by ESI Director Dr. Daniel Miles led the first session titled, “Demographic Multipliers → Development Impacts”. The session took place Sunday, May 7, 2017 and was attended by sixty planners. Wong and Miles gave an in-depth explanation of CDA’s methodological improvements in estimating demographic multipliers, and how using the latest data available is critical to solving complex planning issues for local communities.
The team emphasized that better multipliers, using the latest data that reflects recent trends and specific to local geography, improves reliability which helps to avoid estimation biases. The team reported on broad-based declines in household size and school-age children in the past 15 years, with recent data indicating townhome crowding. Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey were used as examples to show significant variations between local and state multipliers. After the presentation, a New Jersey planner jokingly dubbed Wong, “Mr. Multiplier.”
In their second session, “Improving Fiscal Impact”, the CDA team, including ESI Senior Vice President, Dr. Peter Angelides, AICP, outlined the evolution of fiscal impact analysis and the procedures behind conducting analysis to compare fiscal costs and benefits. Miles discussed two different approaches, the average cost and marginal cost, and stated several limitations of fiscal impact analysis which was followed by a facilitated round table discussion to exchange ideas and share experiences in conducting fiscal impact studies.