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FAQ

Table of Contents

• What is PLACE?
• PLACE’s Mission
• What does PLACE do?
• What is a “Sustainable Community?”
• What does PLACE build?
• What does PLACE develop?
• PLACE’s Next Project
• How is PLACE funded?
• What is “Ethical Development?”
• PLACE Values

What is PLACE?

PLACE is an ethical nonprofit that builds sustainable communities.

Our vision is that every community will be:

• Powered by clean, renewable energy
• Inspired by artists and imagination
• Created in collaboration with thousands
• Open and affordable to everyone
• A transformational place where people can flourish

PLACE was founded in 2005.

The PLACE Team has recently worked on sustainable communities in Ajo, AZ and Philadelphia, PA. Our most recent completed project is the WAV in Ventura, CA [PDF].

PLACE’s Mission

PLACE’s mission is to build a sustainable, just, and inspiring world, one community at a time.

What does PLACE do?

PLACE builds sustainable communities that bring together the arts, environmentalism and social justice.

We think of PLACE as a “make tank,” an organization that creates and builds new and experimental models for communities that demonstrate radical innovation in environmental design, live/work development for artists and creative businesses, luxury green living, affordable workforce housing, and permanent supportive housing for the most economically distressed.

We strive to make each PLACE community reflect the highest community ideals, creating beautiful and inspiring places, lifting people out of poverty, empowering community participation, and providing equal opportunity, all while generating economic return, renewable energy and jobs.

Our aim is change the way communities are made, dramatically improving the way we live, work, commute, create and interrelate, as well as the way we impact our cities and our Earth.

What is a “Sustainable Community?”

A sustainable community must ultimately generate more energy than it needs, be open and affordable to everyone, demonstrate universal design, produce its own food, offer multiple transit options, create places to live, work, create, learn, and play, celebrate its historical and cultural resources, empower the people to participate in its creation, facilitate interconnectedness, be healthy and beautiful and inspiring, and waste nothing.

PLACE wants to create communities that are like a forest; a forest makes its own energy from the sun, it makes oxygen and sequesters carbon dioxide, it’s beautiful to be in, it provides habitat for thousands of species, it recycles everything it makes and wastes nothing.

What does PLACE build?

PLACE builds sustainable communities
PLACE builds affordable live/work space for artists and green space for the arts
PLACE builds sustainable, green affordable housing, workforce housing and permanent supportive housing
PLACE builds zero carbon, zero waste buildings
PLACE builds sustainable, green arts communities, neighborhoods, campuses, intentional communities, urban ecovillages, artist villages, solar villages, holistic communities, conscious communities
PLACE builds live/work communities
PLACE builds sustainable green galleries, theaters, and performing arts centers

What does PLACE develop?

PLACE is an ethical nonprofit developer.

PLACE develops sustainable, mixed-income, mixed-use, live/work, transit-oriented communities
PLACE develops sustainable, green art space/space for the arts
PLACE develops alternative-energy/renewable energy communities
PLACE develops sustainable, green affordable housing and permanent supportive housing, market-rate housing, shops, businesses, offices, campuses, parks, schools and urban, micro-agriculture

PLACE builds sustainable communities, or ecovillages, that bring together the arts, environmentalism and social justice. PLACE is hired by cities, municipal entities, and other large institutions like universities and foundations to create green communities for the public good. We strive to make each PLACE project reflect the highest community ideals, such as creating beautiful and inspiring places, lifting people out of poverty, empowering community participation, and providing equal opportunity, all while generating economic return, renewable energy and green-collar jobs.

PLACE’s Next Project

Imagine a community that makes more energy than it uses, that cleans all its own waste, that is filled with art and imagination, that is affordable to everyone, that creates jobs, that grows its own food, that is home to small businesses, that provides a welcoming place for people at every stage of life, that provides for the health care of its people, that offers educational opportunities for its young people and assistance for its elders, and that demonstrates technological wizardry like levitating windmills and solar cars.

We are ready to make this happen.

How is PLACE funded?

PLACE is a 501(c)3 publicly-supported charity, which means that donations made to the organization are tax deductible. PLACE receives support, advice, contributions and guidance from an emerging movement of global citizens called Ten Thousand Hands. In addition to private contributions and grants from foundations and corporations, PLACE receives funding for its projects from local, state and federal governmental entities. The PLACE organization also collects fees from the development and operation of its projects, speaking engagements, and consulting efforts. You can donate to our efforts by clicking here.

What is “Ethical Development?”

The process of developing land impacts our lives in profound ways, including the way we live, work, commute play, create, and interrelate. Development impacts our health and well being, our relationships and family life, our productivity, our spirituality and happiness, in short, our quality of life. And recently we have begun to understand the impact of land use and land development on a planetary scale.

Studies indicate that the vast majority of private, for-profit developments receive a direct investment of tax dollars, and that the public benefit gained is not commensurate with the dollars expended. There are approximately 4 acres (1.6 hectares) of renewable land per person on the planet. The responsibility to develop this finite and shrinking resource is among our highest.

PLACE pledges to every community our commitment to following our nine principles of ethical development:

1. Keeping Our Word. You many rely on PLACE to honor our agreements.

2. Cultivating Authentic Community Participation. Developments affect community life in profound ways. Many barriers disrupt real citizen involvement. A process to encourage authentic community participation can improve developments and increase civic ?ownership? of projects.

3. Ensuring Efficient Leveraging of Community Resources. Developments, especially those using public land or funds, or benefitting from significant direct or indirect public subsidy, must produce and demonstrate real and lasting public benefit commensurate with the level of public investment.

4. Creating Prevailing Wage/Living Wage Jobs. All aspects of development and operation seek to create living wage and prevailing wage jobs, promote social justice and adopt consensus-based standards that respect workers’ rights (see ILO Declaration).

5. To Guarantee a Reasonable Rate of Return. A mutually-agreed rate of return from the outset will provide protection and reduce risk for both communities and developers.

6. Developing and Operating to Environmentally Responsible Standards. LEED® and comparable rating systems will provide verifiable standards for environmentally-sound development.

7. Respecting the Community’s Cultural & Historical Resources. Understanding and responding appropriately to the cultural landscape of your community and its history will multiply the positive impacts of development.

8. Requiring Transparency. Development organizations will open business models and operating practices to the public and create tracking systems of activities for independent audit.

9. Approving a Vision-Driven Process and Purpose. Developments will open themselves to community purpose and vision. Adopting a public framework for developments will improve impacts and market support.

PLACE Values

Community Empowerment: PLACE should empower people to participate in a development process that affects their community

Creativity: Every community deserves to be filled with creativity, art and culture

Responsibility to the Earth: Every community should be built to the highest known standards of environmental responsibility

Human Flourishing: Every community should provide equitable opportunities for people of all kinds to thrive

Innovation. PLACE projects should demonstrate leading-edge technologies and practices

PLACE’s E-Generation model is a zero-carbon, zero-waste community that generates more energy than it uses and converts its own waste into energy.

At PLACE – Projects Linking Art, Community & Environment, our intent is to build sustainable communities, power them with the sun, wind and Earth, fill them with art and culture, create them together with the people, and make them affordable to all.