About 5 minutes after you have intrigued companies or individuals with the idea of moving to your community, they will want to understand neighborhoods. If you are bigger than a single-stoplight, people live and work in neighborhoods. Companies locate in neighborhoods. In a big or medium sized city, neighborhoods will have names that might not appear on any standard map but that locals use to communicate a lot about the feel of a place and the cost of housing. If you live in a tourist or second home area, a neighborhood map will signal where the locals really live, and it’s probably not on the beach. And if you’re a small town or a rural area, a neighborhood map will clearly show where there is density and where there is room to spread out.
So make a map, fill it with the trendy or the traditional neighborhood names. Add some layers with visual examples of houses for sale or apartments for rent, because no one anywhere pays the median or the average.
Give people the knowledge and language to sound like a local, and maybe they’ll become one.
Want some examples?
Here is a link to a map that Vanderbilt University shows to potential incoming medical scientists https://medschool.vanderbilt.edu/mstp/2021/04/30/a-quick-guide-to-housing-in-nashville/
And here is a great web page describing neighborhoods in San Antonio, but boy would I love to see a map to go along with it