So, you want to help your community develop sustainably, but you don’t know how?

A new report takes a comprehensive look at the state of tools municipalities can use to model and evaluate relative climate change benefits earned by developing differently. The tools it explores can be employed at the project, neighborhood and metropolitan scale. It summarizes the relationship between urban form and climate change and features four case studies on how tools are being used today.

We won’t be able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with technology alone, we will need to combine technological change with changes in our behaviors, transportation priorities, building design and placement, economic development strategies, and fair housing policy. In Connecticut, most planning is done locally, these tools offer ways for volunteers and town staff to develop the analysis they need to plan successful and sustainable communities.

The tools discussed are:
• Athena Impact Estimator for Buildings;
• Community Energy and Emissions Inventory;
• Community Viz;
• Development Pattern Approach;
• Energy Demand Characterization;
• Envision Tomorrow;
• INDEX and Cool Spots;
• I-PLACE3S ;
• MetroQuest;
• Neighborhood Explorations the View of Density;
• Tool for Evaluating Neighbourhood Sustainability; and
• UPlan.

The report is Urban Planning Tools for Climate Change. Its authors are: Patrick M. Condon, Duncan Cavens, and Nicole Miller. It was published by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and is available for purchase in hard copy or free download at www.lincolninst.edu.