The GSO2040 Comprehensive Plan update for the second quarter of 2022 includes a major change in Greensboro’s vision for the future.

The original GSO2040 Comprehensive Plan included the vision statement, “Greensboro: Best Mid-size City in America.”

City Manager Tai Jaiyeoba’s message in the GSO2040 Implementation Update states, “In a recent huddle with our executive team, we tweaked that vision to say, “Greensboro: America’s Most Desirable Mid-Sized City.  It is a bold and ambitious vision which we can realize sooner than 2040.”

So Greensboro is no longer focused on being “the Best Mid-Size City.”  The current focus is on being “America’s Most Desirable Mid-Sized City.”

Exactly how that change in focus is going to affect the workings of city government is not detailed in the GSO2040 update. But Jaiyeoba message does state, “Every time we implement the goals, big ideas and policies in our GSO2040 comprehensive plan, we take the necessary steps to getting there: becoming America’s most desirable mid-sized city.”

The original vision statement, “to be the Best Mid-Size City in America,” according to a letter from Mayor Nancy Vaughan in the GSO2040 comprehensive 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” in crafting the vision statement.  That process is quite different from some of the senior city staff getting together without input from the public or the City Council and writing 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 Tanger Center for the Performing Arts, the Fleming Road Area Plan and celebrating Bike Month.

The reports in the update include how each of these further the goals and strategies outlined in the GSO2040 Comprehensive Plan.

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