Asset Mapping, the Social Fabric Matrix, Economic Impact Analysis, and Criteria for Sustainability and Justice: Operational Elements for Holistic Policy Planning

Asset mapping defines, identifies, and quantifies available resources. It has two advantages for planning economic development. First, while it is labor intensive, asset-mapping implementation is straightforward. Second, it yields information useful to establish, inform, and achieve policy goals. Its limitations are (i) a static approach and (ii) the absence of an evolutionary process to evaluate goal attainment and modify future activities. We explore how asset mapping can be embedded into a social fabric matrix for strategic planning and evaluated using economic impact analysis. This sequential, yet two-way iterative process provides an adaptive template for policy assessment, and a qualitative and quantitative predictive framework to evaluate attainment of goals (here to be understood as the criteria for sustainability and justice, as proposed by Underwood, Hackney and Friesner 2015). Asset mapping in the next time period, structured using evaluative outputs of the social fabric matrix and economic impact analysis, can be reemployed creating a new round of inputs for the social fabric matrix and economic impact analysis to assess the extent to which the criteria for sustainability and justice are achieved. Thus, the iterative process becomes purposeful, evolutionary, and pragmatic.