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LOCATION. COMMUNICATION. EDUCATION.
Real estate is about Location, Location, Location. Economic development is about much more.
Successful communities understand that landing projects, guiding growth, and making sound development decisions require more than the right location. They require an understanding of the opportunity, the process, and the tradeoffs—and a community prepared to engage in the conversation.
Three Points Planning created The Informed Community Series to help communities build that understanding.
These interactive, three-hour sessions bring residents, elected officials, community leaders, and other stakeholders together to explore complex planning and economic development topics in an approachable, engaging format. Participants learn how the process works, why it matters, what the potential benefits and impacts are, and what questions an informed community should be asking.
The result is a more informed, cohesive stakeholder base better equipped to participate in decisions about its community's future.
Choose from our core Informed Community Series topics, or let Three Points Planning develop a customized session around an issue or opportunity facing your community.
Economic Development 101: How Communities Build Stronger Local Economies
Economic development is about much more than recruiting companies. It is the work communities do to create the conditions for businesses, workers, entrepreneurs, neighborhoods, and investment to thrive.
This interactive course takes the mystery out of economic development. Participants learn how businesses choose locations, what economic developers actually do, why communities invest in sites and infrastructure, how incentives work, and how workforce, housing, education, planning, and quality of place affect a community's economic future.
Through real-world examples and interactive exercises, participants will explore both the opportunities and tradeoffs associated with economic development and learn how to evaluate projects and strategies with an informed, supportive—and appropriately critical—eye.
No economic development experience is required. The course is designed for residents, community leaders, neighborhood organizations, civic groups, elected and appointed officials, and anyone interested in understanding how their community grows.
Planning 101: Why Communities Plan—and How Development Decisions Get Made
Why can that subdivision be built there? Who decides what can be built next door? What's the difference between a comprehensive plan and zoning? And when does the public actually have a voice?
Planning 101 demystifies the decisions that shape the places where we live, work, shop, and invest. Participants learn how comprehensive planning, future land use, zoning, development regulations, infrastructure, transportation, and private property decisions work together—and why the development people see today often reflects decisions made years earlier.
Using maps, development scenarios, and hands-on exercises, participants will step into the roles of planners, residents, property owners, developers, and elected officials. The goal isn't to teach participants what to think about growth. It is to give them the knowledge to understand development proposals, participate effectively in planning processes, and ask better questions about their community's future.
Workforce Housing 101: Housing Is Economic Infrastructure
Can the people who work in your community afford to live there?
Housing is increasingly one of the most important—and misunderstood—economic development issues facing communities. Workforce Housing 101 explores the connection between housing, jobs, wages, commuting, business recruitment, employee retention, infrastructure, and community growth.
Participants will learn what "workforce housing" actually means, why housing costs and wages can become disconnected, how housing gets financed and developed, and how zoning, land costs, infrastructure, construction costs, interest rates, and community preferences affect what ultimately gets built.
Rather than advocating for a particular type of housing or development, this interactive course gives residents the tools to understand their community's housing needs, evaluate proposed solutions, recognize legitimate tradeoffs, and ask better questions about housing and growth.
Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash
Industrial Projects 101: From Site to Project
When a community hears that a major industrial project may be coming, the conversation can quickly become dominated by job announcements, tax revenue, traffic concerns, incentives, rumors, and unanswered questions.
Industrial Projects 101 explains what actually happens between a company's decision to search for a location and the day a facility opens its doors.
Participants will learn how companies select sites, what makes property "development ready," why utilities and infrastructure matter, how industrial projects move through due diligence and approvals, and how communities evaluate potential jobs, investment, tax revenue, infrastructure costs, environmental considerations, traffic, and compatibility with surrounding land uses.
Through a simulated site-selection process, participants will see the decision from both sides—what a company needs from a community and what an informed community should require from a project.
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