Our Services

We work on everything from small, short-term projects to large, multi-year initiatives, tackling a wide range of planning and policy challenges. We pride ourselves on being nimble and flexible, teaming with others to bring the necessary tools, expertise and capacity to any job, and quickly adapting to our clients' changing needs.

Housing Policy & Implementation

We are known locally and nationally for our housing expertise.

We have written dozens of certified housing elements; award-winning reports on housing issues, trends, and best practices; and targeted analyses of issues such as short-term rentals, tenant displacement, accessory dwelling units, affordable housing overlay zones, and inclusionary ordinances. We have strong working relationships with national experts in nearly every aspect of housing policy and practice and we produce high-quality, tailored material that has resulted in new housing policies.

We have led the 21 Elements collaborative housing policy effort for more than a decade, gathering all the cities of San Mateo County, and have duplicated this effort in other locations (including Santa Clara County).

Strategic Collaboration

We believe collaboration advances bold change.

We help jurisdictions build collaboratives to share technical resources and build good policy, evolving relationships from competition to cooperation. We have done it throughout California and the country for over two decades, most notably in managing 21 Elements for the jurisdictions in San Mateo County, CA. We produce tailored material that has resulted in new housing policies, and we support the participating cities to expand this work. Similar work with the Association of Bay Area Governments, Santa Clara County, Alameda County, the Minneapolis/St. Paul region, and other locations has made us a leader in strategic collaboration. We’ve also worked on multi-jurisdictional ADU partnerships in Napa and Sonoma, San Mateo, Marin, Los Angeles, and Orange Counties.

Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs)

We build practical, innovative, engaging tools and policy solutions for accessory dwelling unit programs.

Community Planning Collaborative is a national leader in creating policies and tools that help create accessory dwelling units (ADUs). We pioneered a suite of award-winning ADU materials and tools, and there is no firm with greater knowledge of California ADU law. ADU programs require full-spectrum expertise and innovation, from analyses of existing ordinances and a solid understanding of complex new laws to the personal touch of professional ADU case studies and community stories and well-designed, user-friendly materials for homeowners. We complement and expand our clients’ existing ADU work to design and support programs that are a win-win – making ADU development easier for both homeowners and staff. Each community we work with faces a unique set of challenges to ADUs, and we approach each project individually and flexibly. 

See more about our ADU tools and resources on our ADU page.

Inclusive Outreach & Engagement

We are passionate about community engagement.

We have taught it and written about it. We understand how important it is to guide an engagement or facilitation process while letting the participants lead, and we value partnering with organizations and community members to ensure long-term engagement and always welcome the involvement of local groups.

As skilled facilitators, listeners and communicators, we have expertise in consensus building on contentious issues, facilitating groups with strong opinions and different interests, and translating complex technical information into language and visuals everyone can understand. We have facilitated hundreds of meetings, large and small—from educational sessions to dispute resolution meetings that bring together stakeholders and build consensus. We have a large and growing toolkit of engagement methods, from real-time graphic recording of meetings on large sheets of butcher paper to webinars, online mapping and feedback tools, and interactive online open houses and surveys that are available 24/7 in multiple languages. 

Neighborhood & Comprehensive Planning

We facilitate inclusive, efficient, resident-led planning processes.

We bring together stakeholder groups for visioning, work groups, and shared strategy. When Bergen Communities United, a coalition of community organizations in Jersey City, NJ, wanted to create a shared plan to revitalize their neighborhood, they asked us to design and facilitate the process. The resulting action plan defined the roles and commitments being made by each of the stakeholder groups as well as priority actions they needed from the city. Similarly, the Marketview Heights Collective Action Project in Rochester, NY, called on us when they wanted a community-defined strategy to coordinate action across different agencies (including community-based organizations, the City, and Enterprise Community Partners). We partnered with them to coordinate planning, facilitate community visioning and work groups, and develop a shared strategy with near-term actions and long-term priorities (as well as immediate actions that happened while the planning process was in motion).

Sustainability & Climate

We help communities prepare for the future.

Preparation, action, and resiliency in the face of climate change are complex issues for communities to tackle. We help communities and their leadership understand and evaluate potential impacts, strategize priority actions, and understand how to deliver on stated goals. We design participatory exercises and facilitate conversations across departments and with the public to determine action steps.

Organizational Change & Team Building

We help teams act strategically, effectively, and successfully in the face of complex policy and action initiatives.

Complex policy and action initiatives require complex cross-agency and cross-sector teaming as well as effective organizational practices. We apply skills in group process, planning, and facilitation to help teams appreciate differing perspectives as well as shared values; define and understand the problem they are trying to solve; envision and articulate success; and create practical, coordinated strategies to achieve goals. We know it’s not just what a group does but also how they do it that leads to long-term success and durable outcomes. Recent work includes working with staff and directions across eleven departments in the City of Boulder, CO, and working with the statewide Casita Coalition of California to develop their first-ever Strategic Plan.