Placemaking: Tools for Community Action is a starter kit for a community member, city official, planner, or design professional to identify currently available planning tools and to assess their applicability and appropriateness to specific projects or issues, alone or in combination.

For the community member it is intended as a community action guide to further the understanding of the importance of civic engagement and participation processes that draw on the collective wisdom, creativity, and experience of those involved. It will show how to begin the process of leveraging available tools for better decision-making in planning and to understand the requirements, strengths, and limitations of the tools as they apply to particular planning applications.

For software developers it is a guide to understand how planners use existing visualization software, software limitations, and areas where software can be improved to meet design and planning needs.

For planners and community members it illustrates the potential of these tools in the planning process and how to use technology to create better decision-support systems in specific planning processes.

Click here to download this guide.