The 2021 Regional Progress Report tracks change across economic growth, development, travel, and other important indicators in the Sacramento region. By assessing where the region is on a range of key topics the Progress Report serves as a first step for updating the Metropolitan Transportation Plan/Sustainable Communities Strategy (MTP/SCS), SACOG’s long-range plan updated every four years to pro-actively link land use, air quality, and transportation needs in the Sacramento region. The Progress Report is provided in part to help identify important issues that should be prioritized in the next MTP/SCS update, currently slated to be adopted in 2024. 

Given the breadth and range of indicators covered, the Progress Report focuses on documenting trends and change through time, not on delving into causative factors. In other words, the report is meant to shed light on indicators that are important to the success of the MTP/SCS, and whether the region is moving in the right direction to meet these metrics. And by identifying those areas where the region seems to be lagging, the Progress Report can help set up not only what needs to be better understood, but also potential areas of focus for the policies and priorities of the MTP/SCS. 

SACOG last updated the Regional Progress Report in 2017, exploring questions such as how the region had recovered from the Great Recession compared to our California peers or the trends within key development metrics. In this updated version SACOG has incorporated new questions, emerging data sets, and novel ways to display and report on regionally significant findings.

The 2021 Progress Report opens by exploring Who We Are, delving into population, demographics, and other foundational indicators that help explain the unique makeup of the six-county Sacramento region of El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo, and Yuba counties (see the “About the Data” section at the end of this document for more detail on how the report defines the Sacramento region). Next, a section on Economic Prosperity explores the regional economy from a lens of growth, innovation, and inclusion. Such indications help illuminate, for example, how the region’s recent job growth compares to peer regions, or existing disparities within the regional economy.

The Vibrant Places theme looks at development, housing production, and affordability. These indicators can help answer questions such as: has the region’s housing production rebounded from the recession or is the region growing in a manner envisioned by the Blueprint, SACOG’s 2004 smart growth vision for the region? Finally, SACOG tracks a wide number of transportation-related metrics. Contained within the Progress Report’s Connected Communities section, these indicators look to the changing experience of regional residents in using the transportation system.