PLACE³S, an acronym for PLAnning for Community Energy, Economic and Environmental Sustainability, is an innovative planning method that fully integrates focused public participation, community development and design, and computer-assisted quantification tools (GIS) to help communities produce plans that retain dollars in the local economy, save energy, attract jobs and development, reduce pollution and traffic congestion and conserve open space. PLACE³S creates an information base that functions as a common yardstick, empowering a community to compare components of each plan "apples-to-apples," make informed trade-offs, and arrive at a consensus Smart Growth plan. This plan will be broadly supported, economically and environmentally realistic, make investment sense, and encourage Smart Growth benefits to be tracked and reported annually.

Energy use and its effects are an effective organizing principle for regional and community Smart Growth planning. Comprehensive resource efficiency plans simultaneously accomplish other community goals, including affordable housing, increased travel options and reduced traffic congestion, improved air quality, lower infrastructure costs, open space and agricultural land preservation, increased personal and business income and job retention and creation. By advancing community understanding of Smart Growth linkages, PLACE³S opens doors for implementing a variety of state programs at the local level.

PLACE³S was designed specifically for local and regional governments. The method functions within normal planning operations via a familiar five-step process. Broad stakeholder involvement and quantification of demographic, economic and environmental effects are important components of each step.

STEP 1: Start Up and Identify Existing Conditions
Establish the geographic scope of the project and its relationship to other planning projects affecting the study area. Begin stakeholder involvement by creating a long-term vision for the study area and selecting indicators to evaluate each alternative. Collect data needed to document existing conditions (e.g., demographics, jobs, housing stock, infrastructure, resource consumption, environmental conditions).

STEP 2: Establish the Business-as-Usual Alternative
Project existing conditions to the end of the planning period assuming all current policies and market trends remain unchanged. Measure the social, economic and environmental outcome to establish a baseline for comparing other alternatives designed to achieve community goals.

STEP 3: Create and Analyze Alternatives
Work with the stakeholders to develop alternatives that improve upon the expected social, economic and environmental outcome of the Business-as-Usual Alternative. One alternative, often called the Advanced Alternative, will show how optimizing resource efficiency can provide economic and environmental benefits. Stakeholders carefully review and compare the alternatives, noting actions (or sets of actions such as mixing land uses and adding pedestrian amenities near transit) that contribute the greatest benefits. By this point, stakeholders have developed a clear and comprehensive understanding of the value and methods of improving resource efficiency within their community. They are now ready to make informed trade-off decisions.

STEP 4: Create the Preferred Alternative
Review all prior alternatives with stakeholders, carefully discussing the differences in the social, economic and environmental outcomes expected. Assemble the best parts of the alternatives into a new, hybrid alternative. Quantify the social, economic and environmental outcomes expected if this Community Preferred Alternative were to be implemented. Make adjustments to better attain the community's vision.

STEP 5: Adopt, Implement, Monitor and Revise
The PLACE³S database also has value after the Preferred Alternative is adopted. Solid information reduces uncertainty and can attract investors to build the plan. The database can be used to estimate the net change expected and improve our Smart Growth knowledge. The data also can be used to measure the net effect of any proposed changes to an adopted Smart Growth plan, protecting the community consensus from unstudied amendments. Citizens are empowered to make amendments as needed to ensure that Smart Growth goals are realistic and are being met.

DOCUMENTS

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The PLACE³S method is discussed in detail in The Energy Yardstick: Using PLACE³S to Create More Sustainable Communities.

Download the Executive Summary of the PLACE³S Guidebook.
(Acrobat PDF, 14 pages, 381 kilobytes)

Download the Full Document titled The Energy Yardstick: Using PLACE³S to Create More Sustainable Communities.
(Acrobat PDF, 166 pages, 2.5 megabytes)

Case Studies

Download Case Studies Report: SHINING PLACE³S - Sacramento, Calif. and National Examples of Smart Growth.
(Adobe Acrobat PDF, WEB VERSION 50 pages, 1.3 megabytes)

SHINING PLACE³S -- Sacramento, Calif. and National Examples of Smart Growth.
(Adobe Acrobat PDF, PRINT VERSION 50 pages, 12.4 megabytes, NOTE SIZE!)

What Some Are Saying About PLACE³S