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TNS Canada has pioneered a quick start approach to Integrated Community Sustainability Planning. In 6-8 months smaller to medium sized communities can complete an initial planning process and plan to begin implementation. The link to a new QuickStart course is at the bottom of the program description below. I participated in the regular ICSP course last year and there is a lot of transferable value for application in the U.S. It’s followed by a useful comment as well.

A recent link in Sightline highlighted an article on Writing Sustainable Neighborhood Code in CrossCut (seattle/norwest-based public media), illuminated not only an innovative community stakeholder “roundtable” initiatve that is blazing a trail in implementing new sustainable neighborhood code and regulation reform, but a larger initiative to transform land use in Seattle. As such it’s worth watching. Highlights follow:

The California Planning Roundtable’s (CPR’s) Reinventing the General Plan project, shows highly innovative, transformational potential. From a quick review of the site and their impressive work to date, featuring Ontario, San Diego, Sacramento, Marin County, and Truckee, they are off to a good start. Although the theme of sustainability is present, it is not as

A new explain-all sustainability PAS report promises the capacity to benchmark sustainability in your community. That new report and a few other promising sustainability publications are featured in a 071511 email from APABookstore.com

It depends on whether you bicycle near and with a lot of fossil-fuel-burning automobile traffic. Accumulating research is confirming a common-sense notion — breathing tailpipe emissions cannot be that good for you. In fact, it is bad for you. One short-term effect is that it reduces your heart rate variability–it’s capacity to quickly change it’s rate and respond to stress. Read the article!

My roughly written comment on the article follows:

You might as well begin with with Opticos, Daniel Parolek, and the Form-Based Codes Institute (FBCI).

Daniel is the founding principal of Opticos; he is an architect, urbanist, and coauthor of the first comprehensive book on form-based codes, Form-Based Codes: A Guide for Planners, Urban Designers, Municipalities, and Developers (John Wiley & Sons, 2008); and he is the founding board member of the FBCI.

The FBCI has developed a curriculum of workshops and webinars. They are offering an upcoming webinar on designing hybrid form-based and use-based codes, July 27, (go to Linked-In page or email alan@formbasedcodes.org).

The publisher’s summary of the book says the following:

A recent post on the APA SCP Interest Group Linked In site asking for recommendations for other planning visualization tools “that will allow a dense, complex plan to be easily communicated to its citizens in a highly interactive and visually engaging way, showing goals, strategies, implementation steps and performance indicators along with actions the reader can take to help support the plan.”

Sustainability 2030 Clips cross post: Is Global Civilization Failing and is there Hope? Yes to Both!

Sustainability 2030 Clips cross post:  SF Tops Siemen’s US-Canada 2011 Green City Index

The Sustainable Cities Institute (Home Depot) offers a range of resources to support a community’s progress towards sustainability.

One interesting current case is Ann Arbor’s Journey because their situation is likely similar to many cities who have many disparate sustainability initiatives on the ground, but they are uncoordinated or only loosely so.