The Place Standard Tool 2.0 with a climate lens is a joint-led project by Sniffer, Sustainable Scotland Network and Architecture & Design Scotland, together with and funded by Public Health Scotland and Scottish Government. It builds on the widely used Place Standard Tool (PST), designed for considering a joined up, collaborative, and participative approach to climate action within a place.

Newly developed climate lens materials have been piloted with 10 placemaking projects from across Scotland and their feedback used to refine the materials. These materials will be launched in September 2022, and the latest project update can now be viewed at www.ourplace.scot/Place-Standard-Climate

Background

The Place Standard tool (PST) provides a simple framework to structure conversations about place, based around 14 themes. To ensure that placemaking is futureproofed, over the last year the Place Standard Tool with a Climate Lens (PST CL) has been developed to help understand how climate change might play out in a local area, and support communities to design their future place with this in mind.

The tool can help communities consider climate change mitigation i.e., how their place will transition to a net zero future when fossil fuels are no longer used; and climate change adaptation i.e., how their place could better cope with extreme weather as the climate changes.

About the new materials

The new PST CL materials include a suite of tools for facilitators and organisers of PST sessions which can be used in addition to the existing PST resources to help place-making conversations consider these two interrelated aspects (mitigation and adaptation) of how people and places need to address climate change. The ‘Climate Lens’ takes the form of:

• extra guidance and questions in the main PST guidance,
• a climate change prompt document for facilitators,
• a glossary of terms,
• support videos,
• online and in person-tools to help facilitators host effective PST CL sessions (including slide-packs, online whiteboard templates, postcards, etc.).

Support for early adopters

The PST CL materials will be launched in September 2022 and in the meantime, the project team are looking for ‘early adopters’ to hold PST CL sessions and feedback their experience of using the tool.

While the materials developed for the Climate Lens take facilitators step by step through the process of planning and hosting a PST CL session, it is recognised that integrating climate change considerations into placemaking is an area where many organisations are at an early stage of learning. To help, support will be available for an early adopter’s cohort.

If you have a placemaking project in Scotland which would like to use the PST CL and want to be considered for the early adopter cohort, please register your interest with [email protected] by 5pm Friday 26 August 2022.