If you run a business, or another kind of organization, you are no doubt planning for growth. You may be expanding a store, or planning on adding new locations or service sites to your business. It's easy to look around and think, "That part of the city or state is doing well right now, that's where we'll locate." But, will that decision hold up ten years from now?

Truly successful growth comes from careful planning, oftentimes much further out into the future than you may have thought. You could build a store in a populated area now, but what if this town or neighborhood isn't going to get any more populated in the next decade? Instead, you could build a store in a location a little less crowded now, but with research it's clear that there will be additional roads and housing developments built in the near future. And, after studying demographics, the newer residents are the kind of people who buy your product, or use your services.

There are several forms of modeling that can help make educated growth decisions: population growth analysis, demographic modeling, and traffic/transit analysis. Usually, these are all taken together to create a rich profile of a location's current and future characteristics. With this information, it is a lot easier to feel comfortable about growth and the spending it takes to get there.

Fall Line can help with all aspects of growth development. We just finished a major, multi-metro analysis for a big national retailer, which included all of the above modeling. Using statistics, data from all over the country, and our superior mapping capabilities, we created dozens of easy-to-follow displays and presentations to help decision-makers choose where to locate new stores and processing centers. This work can be done on a big or small scale to help anyone with planning for future success.

The Bay Area is already one of the more crowded parts of the US, but people keep on coming here more)

• •Statnote - Another really good online textbook for some basic and advanced statistical techniques. From David Garson at NC State.
• •California Map Repository - HUGE repository of digital map catalogs for all things California. Check out the historical map section, and look back to see how many of the early maps pertained to natural resource exploration.
• •Primary 2008: CNN and NY Times - The best scorecard sites for the current Presidential primaries.

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