Explore EDD regions

Before you start

• EDD regions is an overlay inside Explore, not its own sidebar item. The EDD regions button is on the toolbar at State level; from a county's detail panel you reach the same overlay through View district →. See Explore a location for how levels and the toolbar work.
• An Economic Development District (EDD) is an EDA-designated region — an area the U.S. Economic Development Administration has designated for coordinated economic development, usually spanning several counties. Each district publishes a Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) naming its priorities; Incenti codes that strategy's goals, objectives, and action items into 16 fixed categories so districts can be searched, filtered, and compared like any other metric.
• Not every state has EDA-designated districts. Delaware, Rhode Island, and Wyoming organize economic development at the state level instead and have no EDD region on record.

Steps

Turn on the overlay

1. At State level, click EDD regions in the toolbar. This swaps the whole screen to the district view: 404 EDA-designated districts instead of states, each colored by its business priorities. Click EDD regions again to return to the state view exactly as you left it; nothing about your state search, filters, or selection is affected by turning the overlay on or off.

Choose what the map colors by

2. Use the dropdown next to the search box to choose Each region's top priority (the default — every district colored by its single dominant category) or a specific category under Emphasis on one category (a shading from low to high share of that category's goals). The legend at the bottom of the map always shows No coding (gray, for a district with no SLEDS goals coded) and No EDD designation (state-level) (dashed amber, for Delaware, Rhode Island, and Wyoming).

Switch between Map, Table, and Split

3. Click Map, Table, or Split, same as any other Explore level. The table lists one row per district — District, State, EDA region, Counties, Coded, Top priority, plus a percentage column for every one of the 16 categories — and sorts on any column header.

Search for a district

4. Type into Search EDDs… to match a district by name, its two-letter state code, or the acronym of its name (for example "NCTCOG" for the North Central Texas Council of Governments). Search always checks every district, even while filters are narrowing the map or table. Pick a result to add it to your selection.

Filter by priority or coverage

5. Click Filters to open the filter panel:
   • Prioritizes — check one or more of the 16 business-priority categories (Administration, Broadband, Business Climate, Business Development and Assistance, Business Finance, Community Support, Education, Entrepreneurial Development, Industry Cluster Development, Infrastructure & Project Development, International Trade and Investment, Manufacturing, Recovery & Resilience, Technology-Based Economic Development, Transportation Infrastructure, and Workforce Development). A district matches if any checked category is among its top priorities.
   • Ranges — sliders for Counties served and Coded goals.
   • The panel footer shows a live count, for example "8 of 404 districts match." Click Reset to clear one metric's range, or Reset all to clear everything.

Select a district

6. Click a district on the map, or click its row in the table, to select it. Clicking a second, third, and so on district keeps adding to your selection instead of replacing it; click a selected district again to remove it, or click the X button in the toolbar to clear the whole selection. The right-hand panel fills in with the selected district's details:
   • A header with the district's name, headquarters city and state, and its EDA region.
   • Business Priorities — a bar per category the district has coded goals in, largest first.
   • Goals & actions — the district's coded goal, objective, and action item text, grouped by category (largest group first); each item shows its most specific text with a shorter parent goal underneath. This section loads the first time you open a district's panel.
   • Benchmarks — the district's top categories by share of coded goals, each with a national percentile and the category's share of the national priority mix, so you can see whether a priority is unusually strong here or typical everywhere.

Compare districts

7. Selecting two or more districts turns on a Compare N regions button in the panel and shows a compact comparison in the right rail: a radar chart of the compared districts' priority mix, coverage rows, and a full 16-category share breakdown with the best value in each row shown in green. Click Full comparison to open the full-screen comparison view, which adds a "Best fit by project type" summary and a narrative insight banner. Comparison caps at 5 districts.

Export

8. Select one or more districts, then click Export (in the toolbar, the grid, or the detail panel) to download a CSV — up to 10 districts at a time. The file has two sections: a per-district summary with a percentage column for every business-priority category, followed by a flat table of every exported district's individual goals, objectives, and action items. A single-district export is named after that district (for example sleds-tx-north-central-texas-council-of-governments.csv); a multi-district export downloads as sleds-edd-priorities.csv.

Create a report

9. With a selection made, click Create report (toolbar) or Report (detail panel) to open a District Priorities report: one district produces a single-district report, two or more produce a comparative report (capped at 5). You can also start a District Priorities report directly from the Reports tab by searching for a district there. See Create and export Insights reports for the Reports flow in general.

Find the district for a state or county

10. Outside the overlay, a state's or county's own detail panel includes a Regional priorities (EDD) section listing the district or districts that cover it, each with its top coded priorities. Click View district → on a card there to jump straight into the EDD overlay with that district selected and its panel open.

What happens next

• Turning the overlay off returns you to the state view exactly as you left it; your search, filters, and selection there were never touched.
• Goal and action-item text for a district loads the first time you open its panel or export it; it is not preloaded for every district up front.
• EDD selections, filters, and the color-mode choice are not written into the page URL and are not reflected there the way a State-level selection is — reloading the page or sharing a link does not restore them.

Common questions

Q: Why does my county not show up in an EDD? A: Every county maps to at most one district through a county-to-district crosswalk. If your county's state is one of the three with no EDA-designated district (Delaware, Rhode Island, or Wyoming), there's no district to map to — that state organizes economic development at the state level instead. If your state does have districts but your specific county still shows no match, check the county's own Regional priorities (EDD) section, which states plainly when no district maps to it rather than guessing.

Q: Why do some districts have no priorities listed? A: A district shows "No SLEDS coding located" when its Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy hasn't been coded into the 16 priority categories yet. It still appears on the map and in search — it's colored gray for "No coding" — but has nothing to show in Business Priorities, Goals & actions, or Benchmarks until that coding is added.

Q: Can I export the district list? A: Yes. Select up to 10 districts and click Export anywhere it appears (toolbar, grid, or detail panel) to download a CSV with a per-district summary and every exported district's individual goals and action items.

Q: I want to compare a state with an EDD, or an EDD with a county. Can I? A: No. Comparison only works within one geography level or overlay at a time — you can compare EDD districts with other EDD districts, but not across the EDD overlay and the state or county view. Use a state or county's Regional priorities (EDD) section to see the connection between a geography and its district without leaving that level.

Related

• Explore a location
• Compare locations
• Insights overview and data coverage
• Create and export Insights reports
• Ask Insights