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Active Neighborhood Checklist
Active Living Research grantees have developed an objective and practical checklist to help residents, community groups, local government officials and advocacy organizations determine whether their neighborhoods are activity friendly. The checklist rates communities on land use, presence of public recreational facilities, availability of public transportation and quality of the environment.
Arizona Smart Growth Scorecard
The Arizona Smart Growth Scorecard is a valuable tool for community self-assessment developed by a working group of the Growth Cabinet with input from public and private stakeholders. It is designed to strengthen the ability of local officials to plan for future growth and development and to adopt comprehensive strategies that address growth-related pressures. As Arizona continues to attract unprecedented population growth, all levels of government must play a role in wisely planning and managing both the challenges and opportunities that new growth and development present.
Recognizing that communities measure and track how well they are implementing smart growth and look for areas of improvement, the Growth Cabinet prepared this Scorecard to help communities assess whether they have the right tools in place to promote smart growth. Executive Order 2007-05, directed state agencies to identify how state discretionary funds might provide incentives to communities for growing smarter and technical assistance for those needing support. The intent is to provide communities, counties, and Tribal governments - small or large, rural or urban - with a simple, clear, usable means of evaluating how well prepared they are for the pressures of growth. In addition, the Scorecard can help spur action on local and regional approaches to address growth issues and provide incentives and assistance to communities wanting to effectively and efficiently manage development.
Cities, towns, counties, and Tribal governments will be evaluated by the set of smart growth criteria and indicators contained within the Scorecard.
Brownfields Redevelopment Toolbox for Disadvantaged Communities
Case Studies, site-specific tools, and planning for brownfields remediation in disadvantaged communites are all part of the Brownfields Redevelopment Toolbox for Disadvantaged Communities from the Northeast-Midwest Institute and the Disadvantaged Communities Network.
Citizen Planners Resource Kit
The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy offers U.S. planning boards a complimentary Citizen Planners Resource Kit. The Citizen Planners Resource Kit was developed for distribution to local planning boards and commissions across the U.S. as part of the Lincoln Institute’s mission to reach out to citizen planning commissions through educational programs, publications, multi-media resources, and its website.
Community Image Survey CD
The Community Image Survey from the Local Government Commission (LGC) is a tool for helping decision-makers and their constituents address community design, land use and transportation issues. It uses visual images to help participants evaluate their existing environment and envision their community's future. Tailored for the needs of each community, the survey provides a foundation for planning and implementation efforts.
CommunityViz® Software
CommunityViz® GIS software for land-use planning from Placeways is designed to help people visualize, analyze, and communicate about important land-use decisions. CommunityViz® community planning software provides a real–time interactive environment of 3D visuals, intelligent maps and dynamic analysis tools.
CoolClimate Calculator
The CoolClimate Calculator is designed to help U.S. households evaluate their complete climate footprints, including all direct and indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transportation, household energy, food, goods and services. Users of this online tool can compare their results to typical households in their city or region, and to households with similar size and income, the U.S. average and the global average.
Green and Growing Tool Box
The State of Connecticut offers the Green and Growing Tool Box, a website containing a comprehensive inventory of policies, plans, or programs administered by State Agencies represented on the Inter-Agency Responsible Growth Steering Council.
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 Guide for Health Care™
The Green Guide for Health Care™ is the health care sector’s first quantifiable sustainable design toolkit integrating enhanced environmental and health principles and practices into the planning, design, construction, operations and maintenance of their facilities.
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 Roofs Tree of Knowledge
The Green Roofs Tree of Knowledge (TOK) is a full-featured database on research and policy related to green roof infrastructure. There is a considerable amount of work being done on the many socio-economic and bio-physical benefits that green roofs provide. This database is composed of detailed summaries of research and policy papers in English from around the world.
Green Values Stormwater Toolbox
Green infrastructure is the interconnected network of open spaces and natural areas, such as greenways, wetlands, parks, forest preserves and native plant vegetation, that naturally manages stormwater, reduces flooding risk and improves water quality. The Green Values Stormwater Toolbox provides an overview of how the Great Lakes landscape works and offers details on methods to minimize stormwater runoff without expensive infrastructure projects.
Land Conservation/Water Protection Toolkit on CD-ROM
A multimedia CD-ROM recording of the Protecting Water Resources through Land Conservation: Funding Options for Local Governments webcast is now available for free. The International City/County Management Association (ICMA) and the Trust for Public Land (TPL), in cooperation with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), hosted the webcast in June 2005.
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.
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.
Pilot Calilfornia Infill Parcel Locator
The California Infill Parcel Locator website is a tool for pinpointing potential infill sites throughout the state of California. Such parcels are located in areas that have already been urbanized, but the sites are either completely vacant or have structures assessed at extremely low valuations, relative to the land itself.
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.
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.
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 Slide Shows
The State of Massachusetts' Smart Growth Tool Kit includes Smart Growth Slide Shows that illustrate the basic concepts of each smart growth technique, address some of the issues surrounding implementation, and provide summaries of the case studies that were developed.
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.
Stormwater Guidelines for Green, Dense Redevelopment
In December 2005 the Emeryville City Council in California adopted ''Stormwater Guidelines for Green, Dense Redevelopment: Stormwater Quality Solutions for the City of Emeryville.'' Developed with support from the U.S. EPA, these guidelines outline ideas for meeting new stormwater treatment requirements using site design, parking strategies, and stormwater treatment measures to allow water to flow through plants and soil. Numeric requirements apply to development projects of an acre or more, and will apply to projects of 10,000 square feet or more as of August 15, 2006. The guidelines generally require vegetative stormwater treatment measures, and apply city-wide.
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.
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.
Sustainable Stormwater Program -- Oregon
The Portland, Oregon Bureau of Environmental Services offers a Sustainable Stormwater Management Program that provides outreach, financial and technical assistance, and education for new and redeveloping properties that incorporate innovative stormwater techniques.
Sustaining Rural Places Toolkit
The Sustaining Rural Places Toolkit, a collaborative effort between the Sierra Business Council and Saving the Sierra, offers information on steps you can take to sustain the land, water, and open space in your community for generations to come.
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 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.
Toward a Sustainable Community
The purpose of this toolkit is to provide ideas and descriptions of specific actions that a local government can take to transform itself into a model of sustainable practices. These practices can result in cost savings and increased employment, and enhance environmental quality and community well-being. The message of this toolkit is simple: local governments can lead by example.
Trail-Building Toolbox
The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy is building the most comprehensive resource for rail-trail development, the Trail-Building Toolbox, an online tool that includes an index of topics to help inform and assist trail managers, advocates, and builders.
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.
Your Water – Your Decision
The Source Water Collaborative (SWC) has launched a new (2010) interactive Your Water – Your Decision tool to help states, public water systems, and organizations reach out to local officials and use decision-makers. The tool helps users create a professional-looking guide that highlights their community or state’s specific source water protection needs by customizing subject matter, content, cover photos, contacts and resources.
In addition, users can “brand” their guide by adding their own logo and contact information – making the guide unique for every organization. Use the guide to start a conversation with local officials about what can be done in your community by presenting best practices, people, and resources that can help protect drinking water. Users can create their own customized guides in under 15 minutes.
SWC is comprised of federal, state, and local partners who united to protect America's drinking water at the source – in the lakes, rivers, streams, and aquifers tapped for drinking purposes.
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