The GSO2040 Global Plan Update for the second quarter of 2022 includes a major change in Greensboro’s vision for the future.
The original GSO2040 Global Plan included the vision statement “Greensboro: America’s Best Midsize City”.
City Manager Tai Jaiyeoba’s message in the GSO2040 Implementation Update states, “In a recent huddle with our leadership team, we refined this vision to say, ‘Greensboro: The Midsize City America’s most desirable. It is a bold and ambitious vision that we can achieve before 2040.”
Thus, Greensboro no longer focuses on being “the best mid-sized city.” The current focus is on being “America’s most desirable mid-sized city.”
Exactly how this change in focus will affect the operation of city government is not detailed in the GSO2040 update. But Jaiyeoba’s message states: “Each time we implement the goals, big ideas and policies of our global GSO2040 plan, we take the necessary steps to achieve it: to become the most desirable mid-sized city in America.
The original vision statement, “to be the best mid-sized city in America,” according to a letter from Mayor Nancy Vaughan in the GSO2040 Global Plan, was the result of “160 public events, focus groups, and surveys.” She notes that the city considered “over 6,000 responses from all neighborhoods, ages and races” when developing the vision statement. This process is quite different from having some senior city executives come together without input from the public or city council and write a new vision statement.
The GSO2040 update includes reports on Baily Village, a mixed-use development at the corner of East Market and Dudley Streets, the Tangier Center for the Performing Arts, the Fleming Road area plan, and the celebration of Bike Month.
Reports in the update explain how each advances the goals and strategies outlined in the overall GSO2040 plan.