Citizen Participation   A central component of PLACES' citizen participation is CHARISMA's interactive movies of sites important to the planning process. The other components are the annotated photographs organized to educate stakeholders about various planning issues. A client may engage PLACES to produce a custom version of CHARISMA to put on its web site or to show at public meetings with or without contracting PLACES to assist at the meetings. Since public meetings are labor intensive, many communities choose to use CHARISMA as a stand-alone tool.

Community Profiles   Developers, Chambers of Commerce or Economic Development Commissions can use CHARISMA to showcase a particular site, neighborhood, community or region. CHARISMA can link photos or movies to critical information such as vehicular counts, school test scores or demographic information.

Community or site Character Analysis   Each place has its own character whether it is a site or a town,. The first step in planning or proposing development is to visualize the nature of the place's character so that it may be reflected in the planning or development process. CHARISMA is a tool for making "character" explicit and therefore a means towards rational discussion of change.

Consensus Building   We have found that group examination of interpretative photographs of a neighborhood, downtown or town helps to build agreement as to the precise nature of the place's assets, liabilities and potential. Interactive movies allow citizens to experiment with different scenarios of change and come to agreement about what is acceptable more quickly.

Development Proposals: Before & After   CHARISMA enables citizens and permitting authorities to grasp the physical and design impacts of a proposed development. Depending on the client's requirements, the proposed development can be shown simply and abstractly (as a mass, for example) or in considerable detail.

Education & Training Programs   Jeanne Van Orman has designed and conducted training and educational workshops for citizens and public officials in the US and abroad for 20 years. PLACES offers training as a stand-alone service and also in conjunction with planning programs. CDs or web-based programs are offered in Power Point or via CHARISMA which requires only a browser.

Smart Growth Assessments   Various public bodies have defined Smart Growth according to a set of principles, but Smart Growth can differ radically from community to community. We offer assessments of sites, neighborhoods or whole towns in terms of existing Smart Growth characteristics and potential for development of additional Smart Growth qualities. We suggest preservation, development and zoning strategies to meet Smart Growth objectives.

View shed and Landscape Analysis   As low impact and flexibly sited development become more popular, it is critical to understand where development should or should not occur before subdivision planning or zoning changes occur. Analyzing a view shed or landscape is a critical first step to fitting the development to the land not the land to the development. CHARISMA is a tool that captures the breadth of a landscape through its panoramic movies. CHARISMA can also show specific view sheds and the impacts of alternative development proposals.

Zoning Proposals: Before and After   With ever increasing densities being proposed for Massachusetts communities, it is critically important to visualize: 1) what such densities look like; and 2) how new development can best fit into a neighborhood; 3) what densities used to look like in the days when town centers commonly had 2 and 3 story buildings sited close together and contained apartments or civic meeting spaces over stores.