The ‘Transforming Tomorrow Together – Greater Mankato 2040’ initiative is a regional planning and visioning project that is exploring a shared future vision for the Greater Mankato Region. This region is defined as an area extending around Mankato for about 60-70 miles, which appears to be a natural area of collaboration.

Future Orientation
This initiative is focused on Strategic Foresight and Strategic Positioning for the future of the region. It will explore where and how we can fit into a rapidly changing world, looking out to 2040, and even beyond. We want to understand how we need to evolve as a regional community. The result will be a shared regional plan, that will contain an initial implementation road-map out to 2030 – with actions – to move us toward the shared vision we create for the region.

Our Engagement Approach
The ‘Transforming Tomorrow Together – Greater Mankato 2040’ initiative is designed to give people in the region, and our stakeholders a chance to help design our future.

We are designing a connected, collaborative approach and want to include voices from across the region. There will be lots of opportunity to participate, including surveys, focus groups, and community workshops.
We are taking a bold and ambitious long-term view and thinking about how Greater Mankato can thrive in a changing world.
We want to connect to other strategic planning efforts in region and learn from our internal and external stakeholders.

Methodological Approach
A successful visioning process is based on three primary principles: It is future oriented, data driven, and people focused. The ‘future orientation’ is particularly important to take account of rapidly emerging social and technological trends. The ‘data driven’ ensures the plan is built on solid research, public input, and information, and is measurable. The ‘people focused’ is important to build support for the vision for the region, and to harness the best possible input into the visioning process.

Wax dheeri ah baro