Visualizing Alternatives 

The suite of tools that are available to create visual representation of growth or development alternatives have revolutionized decision-making.  They allow citizens to "see" what various scenarios will look like and help decision-makers and stakeholders to identify and understand impacts on their communities.   

Impact Analysis

PlaceMatters is familiar with and can apply many tools that allow for scenario planning and impact analysis.  Tapping into our Smart Growth Tools database and our past experience applying various tools to community design challenges, PlaceMatters staff members are able to design a process that allows for the understanding of tradeoffs and the analysis of impacts of various growth and development scenarios.

Community Capacity Building

We look for ways to incorporate decision support tools into the way things are done in communities. This requires both institutional and technical capacity building. We work towards institutionalizing the use of tools so that they become part of the fabric of decision-making and incorporated into the iterative steps of the planning process.

Indicators

We collaborate with communities to help them develop indicators that will enable them to understand and measure where they are today, where they are heading in a business-as-usual scenario, where they would rather be heading, and how they can get there. The combination of indicator projects and analysis tools give people the capacity to monitor the progress of project implementation and continually monitor whether the community is headed in the right direction.