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Sustainable Development Tools

Successful implementation of the Creating Sustainable Places vision depends on informed decision making. Providing the most accurate, timely information in a format that is easily understandable to a large, diverse group of people is always a challenge. Tools can help improve decision making by cutting through some of these challenges. Tools are available to help participants visualize possibilities, communicate with each other and with community stakeholders, and make community decisions.

Early in the Creating Sustainable Places initiative, MARC and its partners identified the lack of technical resources and tools as a common obstacle to promoting a more sustainable region. For example, a common barrier to promoting sustainability is understanding the economic impacts of various proposals — how will a proposed development affect the bottom line for the developer and government agency? How can local governments assess the full range of environmental, economic and social impacts of a development proposal — for both the developer and the government agency?

In order to help close the gap on this lack of technical resources and tools, the Creating Sustainable Places initiative is creating a digital toolbox which consolidates some of the most prevalent and useful tools for planners into one resource, with helpful summary information and case studies.

In creating the digital toolbox, we looked for tools that are:

• RESPONSIVE: Each tool should address one or more of the Creating Sustainable Places guiding principles, and also be helpful and useful in simplifying planning processes.
• USER FRIENDLY: The tools must be easy to understand and work with so that end users are confident applying them.
• INTERRELATED: To be most effective, the tools should work well and relate to each other so that users don’t duplicate work and effort.
• RESPOND TO VARYING SCALES: Tools are needed for different geographic scales — regional, corridor and project. Some tools can adjust and work for all three scales, while others will be more localized and work best for a specific project or site.

Types of Tools in the Toolbox

Planning Decision Support Tools — generally GIS-based software applications that allow different scenarios and their impacts to be mapped, quantified and understood.

Implementation Tools — including key financial and development code models that have proven successful.

Visualization Tools — to help visualize different sustainable concepts, often in 3D, in order to better communicate the physical impacts of community decisions.

Engagement Tools — designed to make sharing, gathering and collecting stakeholder input easier and to help implement the community engagement strategy.

Other Helpful Tools — calculators, checklists and reference data.