Carbon calculator enables users to learn how their energy use, commute, travel, recycling routines, and diet contribute to their environmental impact (www.ecohatchery.com/calculator)
Learn more at the link below.
Economic Development and Redevelopment
Economic Development and Redevelopment: A Toolkit on Land Use and Health is a toolkit designed for nutrition and other public health advocates who need additional resources, beyond zoning and general plan revisions, to improve the food access in low-income neighborhoods and are seeking a fundamental, introductory understanding of the economic development and redevelopment tools available, their use, and how to effectively participate in decisions about their use.
Equitable Development Toolkit
PolicyLink offers the Equitable Development Toolkit, a comprehensive set of policy options to advance economic and social equity.
Green Communities Program
Green Communities is a web-based toolkit and planning guide from the U.S. EPA that is designed to help communities access the tools and information to help them become more sustainable, Green Communities.
Green Playbook
The Playbook, a web-based resource, provides strategies, tips, and tools that cities and counties can use to take immediate action on climate change through: Green building, green neighborhoods, and sustainable infrastructure. The Playbook is designed both for communities that are considering making the first steps toward these, as well as for those who want to take existing efforts to a new level.
Green Schools Toolkit
Southface's Green Schools Toolkit is a web-based resource designed to provide K-12 schools with resources specifically geared for school designers and builders, energy and facility managers, superintendents and boards of education, as well as teachers, students and parents.
Housing Toolkit
The National Trust for Historic Preservation has created a toolkit that shares their work and the work of others in the three critical areas that affect Housing: Public Policy, Financing, and Housing Practices.
How Green is My Town
''How Green Is My Town?'' is a project of Grassroots Environmental Education, a non-profit organization based in Port Washington, New York. It began with a simple question from one of the organization's board members: ''How do I know if my town is really green?''
Local Government-School District Collaboration: Sample Documents
The International City/County Management Association (ICMA) has created a webpage focusing on Local Government-School District Collaboration: Sample Documents. This library document is an online appendix to Local Governments and Schools: Working Together for the Community's Future, an ICMA IQ Report published in February 2008.
New York Land Use and Transportation Products
The New York State Department of Transportation's (NYSDOT) Smart Planning Program has developed a number of tools to help illustrate the link between transportation and land use planning and to educate communities about Smart Growth.
North Carolina Community Design Toolkit
The North Carolina Community Design Toolkit is an online service that helps community leaders identify how to accomplish better planning and community design.
Park Equity and Public Health Toolkit
Many elements of a community's environment affect the health of residents, from air and water quality, to availability of transportation and markets, to walkability and access to parks and recreation opportunities. The Park Equity and Public Health Toolkit from the Trust for Public Land (TPL) is designed to engage and inform community leaders as well as parks and health advocates as they consider the built environment in their communities and its effect on a broad range of issues related to health, social justice, the environment, and quality of life.
Playbook for Green Buildings and Neighborhoods
The Playbook is a web-based resource that provides strategies, tips, and tools that cities and counties can use to take immediate action on climate change through: Green building, green neighborhoods, and sustainable infrastructure. The Playbook is designed both for communities that are considering making the first steps toward these, as well as for those who want to take existing efforts to a new level.
Policies that Work: A Governors' Guide to Growth and Development
The Governors' Institute on Community Design offers the online resource Policies that Work: A Governors' Guide to Growth and Development. This free resource lays out a systematic approach to smart growth policymaking at the state level. It is designed to provide governors and their staff and cabinet secretaries with hundreds of ideas about policies, administrative actions, and spending decisions that have actually produced smarter growth in other states -- ideas and outcomes that they may be able to replicate in their own states.
Public Schools: A Toolkit for Realtors
The Public Schools Toolkit provides a set of tools to help REALTORS® and REALTOR® associations place themselves in a position to influence the debate and help with the challenges that face communities regarding public education.
Quality Growth Toolbox
Cumberland Region Tomorrow (CRT) offers a Quality Growth Tool Box designed to help create quality growth strategies and projects in your community. Working with key regional leaders, local and state partner agencies, and professional consultants, CRT tailored the Tool Box to meet the specific needs of communities in the Cumberland Region of Tennessee.
Revitalizing Southeastern Communities: A Brownfields Toolkit
NALGEP offers Revitalizing Southeastern Communities: A Brownfields Toolkit in partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Region 4 (EPA). This interactive compact disc provides local officials with the information needed to redevelop brownfields and revitalize their communities.
Safe Routes to School
Did you walk or bike to school when you were a child? Thirty years ago, more than 66 percent of all children walked to school -- enjoying the fresh air, getting to know their neighborhood, and arriving at school alert, refreshed, and ready to start their day. Today most American children are denied this experience, with only 13 percent of American children walking or biking to school. Safe Routes to School is a toolkit that will help you develop a plan with your school, community, and local government to create a healthy lifestyle for children and a safer, cleaner environment for everyone.
Smart Growth Implementation Toolkit
The Smart Growth Implementation Toolkit, produced by the Smart Growth Leadership Institute, is a set of practical tools to help your community grow smarter. It will help you untangle the thicket of policies and procedures that get in the way of smarter growth and sustainable development.
Smart Growth Network Information Kit
The Smart Growth Network Information Kit is a set of resources that will provide you with a comprehensive introduction to smart growth. To make research easier, the publications are divided by topic area. You will also find presentations and fact sheets to share with others.
Smart Growth Readiness Assessment Tool
The Smart Growth Readiness Assessment Tool (SGRAT) is a set of online assessments for scoring how well a community is prepared to develop according to Smart Growth principles. The assessments provide communities with a baseline score, and can be used to measure progress.
Smart Growth Shareware -- v2
Version 2 of the Smart Growth Shareware cd-rom contains all the publications, presentations, and websites of version 1 plus more and is a great resource for anyone wanting to learn more about the smart growth field or educate others. Topics covered include public health, children and schools, land conservation and water, transportation and more.
Smart Growth: A Toolkit for Realtors
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) has produced Smart Growth: A Toolkit for Realtors, a six-chapter publication that provides an overview of smart growth and its importance to the real estate community.
SmartCode V9.0
The SmartCode is a model transect-based development code available for all scales of planning, from the region to the community to the block and building. The code is intended for local calibration to your town or neighborhood. As a form-based code, the SmartCode keeps towns compact and rural lands open, while reforming the destructive sprawl-producing patterns of separated use zoning.
SMARTe: A Revitalization Decision Support Tool
Sustainable Management Approaches and Revitalization Tools -- electronic, known to its friends as SMARTe, is a free, web-based decision support system for developing and evaluating future reuse scenarios for potentially contaminated land. SMARTe contains resources and analysis tools for all aspects of the revitalization process including planning, environmental, economic, and social concerns.
Sustainability Planning Toolkit
The new Sustainability Planning Toolkit from ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability USA establishes for the first time the best practices to develop a local sustainability plan. With ICLEI’s toolkit, jurisdictions of all sizes can now follow a proven, straightforward, and flexible process to create long-term sustainability plans that bring together their individual environmental, economic, and social initiatives under one holistic vision.
The toolkit, which has been developed for ICLEI’s 600 U.S. local government members, is based on the planning model pioneered by City of New York for its renowned PlaNYC sustainability plan. The toolkit was authored by ICLEI and developed through a close collaboration between ICLEI and the City of New York’s Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability.
“ICLEI launched the first global initiative to develop the methods and tools for local
sustainability planning in 1992 at the United Nations’ “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro. Since that time, ICLEI has supported thousands of local governments in scores of countries to develop their customized approaches for putting the complex goal of
sustainability into local practice,” said Jeb Brugmann, ICLEI Global’s founder and current Executive Director of ICLEI USA. “This toolkit draws from the most recent best practices in the United States to help cities and counties take their sustainability planning efforts to the next level. With a sustainability plan to guide their actions, cities like New
York, Minneapolis, Santa Monica, and many others have shown that they can more effectively combat climate change, green their buildings, update infrastructure, invigorate
their local economies, and improve public health and quality of life for their community members.”
“Our message to all local governments is that the secret to a successful sustainability plan is a rigorous planning process,” added Brugmann, “and this toolkit walks local
governments through what can be a very complex process.”
To reach their chosen sustainability goals, local governments can follow ICLEI’s Five Milestones for Sustainability process, which is the foundation of the toolkit:
- Milestone One: Conduct a sustainability assessment
- Milestone Two: Establish sustainability goals
- Milestone Three: Develop a local sustainability plan
- Milestone Four: Implement policies and measures
- Milestone Five: Evaluate progress and report results
By following this process, local governments can create plans with strong, measurable goals that can be tracked over time. The ability to measure performance has been a key to the success of PlaNYC.
Inside the toolkit, local government staff will find guidance on how to structure their
planning process, what types of strategies and measures to include in their plan, step-by-step guidelines to achieve each of the Five Milestones, best-practice examples, checklists,
templates, and guidelines for organizing a team to develop the plan.
Visit the link below to view the toolkit’s table of contents,
introduction, and related free resources. Only ICLEI member local governments, however, may download the complete toolkit.
Sustainability Toolkit: How to Maintain Your Community Improvements
The Center for Civic Partnerships has created a Sustainability Toolkit that outlines ten steps to maintaining your community improvements. Discover how to sustain the improvements you've made in your community's health and/or quality of life. This toolkit takes you through a 10-step process for determining which efforts should be maintained and deciding how to successfully continue them.
Sustainable Communities for All Ages
JustPartners Inc. presents the ''Sustainable Communities for All Ages: A Viable Futures Toolkit.'' The Viable Futures Toolkit is a comprehensive, user-friendly resource that turns the challenges of an aging population into opportunities for all ages to thrive. It offers guidance to planners, policymakers, service providers, and funders about how to create solutions for older generations that simultaneously address needs of younger generations and their communities.
Sustainable Communities for All Ages -- Toolkit Highlights
JustPartners Inc. has added highlights of their Viable Futures Toolkit to the Sustainable Communities for All Ages website. The ''Toolkit in Action'' resource page includes links to case studies and feedback from communities who are using the Toolkit.
The Healthy Development Measurement Tool
The Healthy Development Measurement Tool (HDMT) from the San Francisco Department of Public Health is a comprehensive, online evaluation metric to consider health needs in urban development plans and projects.
The Public Official's Guide to Affordable Housing
The Public Official's Guide to Affordable Housing is a CD-ROM from the Michigan Municipal League designed to train local public officials in the issues, programs, and opportunities available in the field of affordable housing. It provides creative and effective solutions to the many problems and issues encountered by local units of government.
The Smart Growth Toolkit
There are many complex and technical issues involved in building smarter communities. The Smart Growth Tool Kit from Smart Growth BC provides an overview of key sustainability issues including an introduction to smart growth, smart growth tools, citizen involvement strategies and references on additional information sources for those who want to know more.
Toolkit for Affordable Housing Development
The Toolkit for Affordable Housing Development from the Washington Area Housing Partnership is a compilation of policies and planning tools local governments can use to preserve and promote affordable housing development in their respective communities.
Visualizing Density: Online Tool
The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy has created Visualizing Density, an online, interactive educational section of their website that provides users with a foundation for understanding how density benefits communities. This resource illustrates how appealing, livable communities can be created by using design techniques that combine varied building shapes and sizes, siting strategies, and open space principles.
