About PlaceMatters

Our Mission:

To support the creation and maintenance of sustainable, vibrant communities by improving decision-making.

Our Organization:

PlaceMatters believes in informed, effective, and equitable citizen engagement.  We work to ensure that communities and organizations design and implement processes that garner broad public involvement and support, educate participants, and lead to sustainable, livable communities. 

The PlaceMatters Decision Lab

The Decision Lab is PlaceMatters' inside-out R & D lab.  We are building a community of tinkerers, hackers, designers, coders, and practitioners dedicated to building the next generation of tools and techniques for better decision making around planning and sustainability.

The PlaceMatters Sustainable Solutions Group

The Sustainable Solutions Group manages PlaceMatters' on the ground projects, working with communities, regions, and organizations to improve decision-making processes.

The PlaceMatters Institute

The PlaceMatters Institute serves as a hub of the tools and techniques used to help communities make good, informed, durable, implementable decisions about land use and sustainability.

PlaceMatters' History

PlaceMatters was launched in 2002 (as PlaceMatters.com) to fill the need identified by organizers and participants of the Tools for Community Design and Decision Making (TCDDM) workshops.  These workshops, organized by Ken Snyder six times between 1998 to 2005, served as a gathering point for community practitioners, decision-support tool providers, and public agencies and foundations to establish more effective ways of determining the future of communities.

For three years, PlaceMatters provided in-depth technical assistance and public process design, technical audits and tools recommendations to various projects at the community and regional scale.  In 2005, PlaceMatters staff became the Planning Tools branch of the Orton Family Foundation.  While with the Foundation, PlaceMatters staff worked to encourage and explore the innovative use of tools in community participation, planning, and design. 

In early 2007, PlaceMatters was re-created through a spin-off from the Orton Family Foundation.  PlaceMatters is an independent 501(c)3 organization supporting the creation and maintenance of sustainable, vibrant communities through improving decision-making.