Readers may be interested in the recently developed Place Standard tool [1]. It is a very useful resource for both professionals and communities interested in assessing the strengths and weaknesses of places as a basis for the improvement of in their areas.. Furthermore it is a free resource.
Place Standard was developed through collaboration between NHS Health Scotland, the Scottish Government, Architecture and Design Scotland and the City of Glasgow. Interestingly it employs a methodology not unlike that used in the PASCAL Benchmarking tool which profiles the engagement of universities and colleges with their communities.
The Place Standard spans 13 aspects of places including public transport, play and recreation, work and local economy, social interaction, feeling safe, facilities and amenities and influence and control, Community stakeholders are invited to come together to discuss and agree ratings on each of the 13 dimensions, and from these scores a radar diagram is created which profiles the good and less good aspects of a place; here is an example:
It is already being applied to useful effect by a number of local councils in Scotland, to provide a focus for planning activity.
Profiling places in a way such as this raises the intriguing prospect of how this anaslysis could be related to profiles of engagement from the PASCAL benchmarking tool [2].
For more information on the Place Standard tool go to https://placestandard.scot [3] .