Measuring and
Defining Success
Looking at these issues, it becomes
clearer how equity, resilience, and
climate protection cut across all of
the plan’s topic areas, and are even
interwoven within each other. The
need for growth and densification,
for example, directly relates to all
three lenses—increasing market
supply of housing is a major
strategy for curbing the rise in
housing prices and for increasing
options for different household
types, a more diverse housing
stock is a large component of
social resilience, and multifamily
units lead to much lower carbon
emissions per household.
For this reason, this plan
includes, beyond goals and
recommendations for each
topic area, a shorter set of “top
goals,” which tend to cut across
these lenses. While the full set of
topics and recommendations are
important for all city departments
to help implement over the next
decades, this plan feels that
the top goals are the particular
priorities that will get the most
policy bang for the literal and
proverbial buck.
These top goals, then, need to be
measurable and implementable.
Each top goal has an additional set
of metrics and targets that can be
used to see progress over time.
While these metrics cannot fully
encompass what it means for one
of these goals to be achieved, they
still serve as markers of progress.
In addition to being tied to
top goals, the larger set of
recommendation prioritizations
is the biggest way to implement
the ideas in this plan. Each
recommendation is marked as
near-, mid-, or long-term. In
addition to seeing outcomes
via the metrics, seeing different
recommendations and their
timeframes is a secondary way
to measure progress and success
with this plan.
Comprehensive Master Plan
A living document
Imagine Nashua is intended
to bea “living” document
allowing for periodic
review, reconsideration and
adjustment, and recognizes
that modification of goals and/
or actions may be required to
reflect changing conditions
and ongoing concerns in the
city. The success of this master
plan should not be measured
by an ideal end-state, but
instead by how well we follow
through with actions and
recommendations suggested
in this plan.
