| Land Use and Growth Management |
| Planning with PLACE3S |
| By Sara Stein, Portland, Oregon 1-503-478-2357, steins@pbworld.com
|
| PB helped to develop and
is now using a unique new planning tool that was designed to help
communities balance their needs and meet long-term goals by selecting
the best combination of land use strategies for their local circumstances. |
|
Figure 1: Job/Housing Balance |
PLACE3S is an urban planning method and GIS tool that helps
communities to understand how their growth and development decisions
can contribute to improved sustainability. Its name is an acronym
for PLAnning for Community Energy, Economic and Environmental Sustainability.
Using GIS, PLACE3S evaluates how efficiently a community:
- Integrates land uses
- Identifies land for redevelopment potential
- Provides housing and jobs
- Transports people and materials
- Allocates public infrastructure improvements
- Uses other resources.
PLACE3S is unique in that it integrates public participation,
planning, design, and quantitative measurement into a strong and diverse
partner-based planning process that is appropriate for both regional
and neighborhood-scale assessments. It is being developed in the public
sector by PB and Fregonese Calthorpe Associates, with funding from
the California Energy Commission and in collaboration with ESRI (the
company that developed ArcInfo in 1981 and ArcView GIS in 1992) and
Pacific Meridian.
The PLACE3S GIS tool is packaged as an extension to Arc/View
GIS. It was designed to be useful in supporting smart growth concepts
in regions, cities, and communities, and to be easily accessible to
planners, policy makers, citizens and students. Together, the PLACE3S
methodology and the GIS tool allow an interactive, participatory,
analytical process to evaluate land use planning scenarios and their
impact on a community and region.
The
PLACE3S Method
The idea behind PLACE3S is that the planning and design
choices that a community makes impacts its development patterns, modal
choices, infrastructure costs, redevelopment potential and livability.
By being aware of their choices, communities can improve their economies,
environments, and quality of life. The PLACE3S model helps
a community balance its needs and meet its long-term goals by selecting
the best combination of land use strategies for its circumstances.
It does this by comparing existing conditions (how efficient the community
is today) with future conditions (how much more or less efficient
the community could become) under a range of planning alternatives.
Instead of creating one optimum plan, PLACE3S provides
a relatively simple, consistent quantitative approach to illustrate
order-of-magnitude differences between planning alternatives. For
example, rather than provide a single method to measure and reduce
a region's traffic congestion, PLACE3S helps to create
and quickly measure different land use scenarios so that a community
can choose how to influence transportation mode choices, while also
addressing other planning needs. The outcome of using the PLACE3S
method is a more thorough integration of community goals, economic
efficiency, and environmental improvements.
Figure 2: Existing zone (top), TOD with housing focus
(middle), TOD with employment focus (bottom) |
Figure 3: Final land use plan |
The PLACE3S GIS Tool
The PLACE3S model uses a real-time, state-of-the-art GIS
tool to analyze and display the results of different land use scenarios
in an easily understood geographical format. PLACE3S can
be used to create multiple future scenarios and present the information
in a series of digital maps, data tables, and bar charts that effectively
communicate results to the public and decision-makers. The data and
maps help to clarify the trade-offs a community must make by providing
a common yardstick for measuring and understanding how well a land
use plan will meet a complex set of goals.
The strength of the GIS tool lies in its ability to easily and quickly
create alternative land use scenarios that can be compared against
each other and to a future projection of the present land use without
modification. PLACE3S can also calculate how well each
scenario compares to one or more sets of "indicators" for
the values held important by the community and decision-makers.
Some of the indicators that can be quantified using the GIS tool include:
- Vehicle miles traveled per household
- Jobs and housing units created through redevelopment
- Air pollution per capita
- Ewelling units per acre
- Employees per dwelling unit
- Jobs per capita
- Acres of open space per person
- Access to retail.
Case Study: Sacramento PLACE3S
In the City of Sacramento, California, PB is using the PLACE3S
planning method and GIS tool to develop a transit oriented land use
plan for the city's 65th Street light rail station. PB and City staff
worked together to generate a number of land use plans that would
address the local conditions of the 60-acre site and connect the land
uses surrounding the station area in support of light rail. The existing
land uses are low density, suburban style office, retail, and industrial
uses.
Six plans were created initially and their impacts measured in terms
of numbers and densities of jobs and houses, transit boardings, vehicle
miles traveled (VMT), air emissions and energy use. Three of the plans
addressed existing scenarios (e.g., existing land uses, current zoning,
and what the "trend" may be in 20 years if the current zoning
remained the same). The other three plans (Figure 2) presented alternative
scenarios that incorporated smart growth principles (e.g., low intensity
mixed use, transit oriented development (TOD) with an employment focus,
and TOD with a residential focus).
Local citizens, property owners, and agency stakeholders used this
information at a community meeting to increase the quality of their
decision-making process and to develop consensus on future development
for this site. The PLACE3S GIS tool was used interactively
at the meeting to allow participants to create their own land use
plans and measure each against a set of indicators. This ability allowed
the participants to see how well their land use scenarios performed
in terms of housing/jobs balance, transit boardings, etc. In the end,
every small group developed a preferred plan that would implement
TOD principles for substantially higher densities (through taller
buildings, lower parking requirements, and structured parking), and
a balance of housing and employment uses (Figure 3). Measuring the
preferred plans, PLACE3S estimated a nearly 50 percent
increase in train boardings from current conditions, and a 15 percent
to 20 percent decrease in household VMT.
The redevelopment module of the PLACE3S tool is now being
used to estimate the economic feasibility of the different land use
scenarios. In the next several months, the City staff and community
will continue using PLACE3S to fine-tune their plans to
make the 65th Street train station a mixed use, transit oriented village
that serves the students and faculty of adjacent Sacramento State
University. |
|
| Sara Stein, an urban planner, has provided technical planning, research,
facilitation, community outreach and GIS mapping services for multi-jurisdiction,
multi-issue projects throughout the U.S. west coast and British Columbia.
She uses GIS technology to assist in the decision-making process for
projects that require innovative approaches to land use/transportation
planning, design and analysis. |
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