In the real world, the livelihood of the region's residents depends on more than just growth. It extends to whether residents enjoy a comfortable living environment and whether everyone has access to job opportunities. We know from the performance indicators which have been presented here that the Kalamazoo-Battle Creek region is not performing as well as it could. We are not growing and producing new job opportunities at an optimum rate for our residents. Our competitors are more prosperous than we are, and valuable people are leaving our region in search of better opportunities. Worse still, an increasing number of our residents and their children live below poverty level. Finally, urban sprawl has the potential to threaten our prized quality of life and diminish the sustainability of current as well as future growth.

Balancing prosperity, disparity and sustainability is key to achieving positive performance in our region because these dimensions are interdependent. Worker shortages in the key industries, for example, can be addressed in part by reaching out to and training more of the disadvantaged portion of our population. Continuing adult education also provides possibilities for upward mobility for those currently at the low skill end of the career ladder, while meeting needs for much-needed skills in the economy. A deteriorating environment in terms of pollution or urban sprawl encroaches on our quality of life-which is essential to attracting both professional workers and high wage businesses to our region. Focusing on improvements across these three dimensions of economic performance is a basic objective for economic strategy, and consequently, for Regional EDGE.