Resources
Glossary
Definitions of words and acronyms found in ON TO 2050 are below.
- Career pathway
- A system or program that helps individuals to alternate between and combine education, training, and employment over time. Along the way, well-articulated guidance and support services enable them to pursue a series of manageable steps leading to attainment of industry-recognized credentials and career advancement in growing occupations.
- Climate resilience
- The ability of our region and its communities to prepare for and recover from the acute shocks and chronic stresses of climate change by transforming our infrastructure, natural systems, and social structures to be more responsive and adaptable.
- Cluster initiatives
- A plan or program to make organized, concerted investments in addressing the growth constraints of a cluster in which the region has a competitive advantage.
- Disinvested
- Areas that have experienced a persistent, long-term lack of market investment, measured by a long term loss of jobs, low levels of lending to small businesses, and low property values. These areas are a focus for strategies that seek to reinvest in communities that have been left behind, improving quality of life and economic opportunity for entire communities to promote inclusive growth.
- Ecosystem services
- The collective services from an array of natural resources and processes; they include cleaning the air, filtering and cooling water, storing and cycling nutrients, conserving and generating soils, pollinating crops and other plants, regulating climate, sequestering carbon, protecting areas against storm and flood damage, providing habitat, and maintaining hydrology and water supplies.
- EDAs
- Economically Disconnected Areas. Areas with a concentration of low income residents and either minority residents or residents with limited proficiency in English. These areas are a focus for strategies that improve connections between residents and the region’s economy to promote inclusive growth.
- Incentives
- A financial subsidy provided to a private business or developer to induce economic, fiscal, or other goals. Incentives can take many forms like tax credits, rebates, abatements, and preferences; non-tax cash grants and loans; or other inducements like infrastructure investments, fee waivers, and land write-downs.
- Paratransit
- Reservation-based transportation service for people with disabilities, without fixed routes or timetables.
- TRA
- Targeted Reinvestment Area. Locally-designated places that help implement plan priorities around investing in transit and mixed use areas, disinvested areas, and economic centers and are therefore a priority for infill development, infrastructure investment, and other assistance.
- Traded clusters
- A regional concentration of related industries and firms that sell products and services outside of the region and gain specific competitive advantages from their close proximity, shared human capital assets, and improved access to inputs.
- Water demand management
- Water conservation strategies that can help meet future water demands through reducing water use, such as universal metering, water accounting and loss control, water costing and pricing, water reuse and recycling, and information and education.
- Workforce development system
- The complex network of organizations and activities committed to preparing individuals for employment, helping workers advance in their careers, and ensuring a skilled workforce. The system most directly involves public, non-profit, and for-profit institutions that offer education and training programs, as well as public workforce agencies that provide job-placement assistance, apprenticeships, and related support services like transportation or childcare. Other stakeholders include employers, business associations, unions, public and philanthropic funders, and community-based organizations.