Code Score: A New Aid for Aligning Policy and Vision With Outcomes

"Whether we’re talking equity, affordability, jobs, health, or a list of other pressing topics, every community strives for more effective outcomes from policies to address a broad range of competing demands. The fact that the demands – and the strategies to address them – are competing for time and resources is its own problem, especially in an era of diminishing trust in cities’ and towns’ capacities to deliver on the collective local vision."

"There’s hope, though, in what we’ve learned about bonuses that come with protecting and expanding compact, mixed-use neighborhoods that aren’t auto-dependent. Here’s a fundamental epiphany: The challenges are interconnected. And so are the solution paths." 

Borys goes on to connect some of the many dots – or data points – painstakingly laid out in the cool new tool, Code Score. Lest you be put off by the sound of 135 studies about the paybacks of city planning, know they distill them down to soundbites for you, and deliver them in a couple of ways: paragraph form per topic followed by a bibliography, as well as a downloadable Google Sheet. Their reason why:

"It would be super helpful, would it not, if there was one space on the crowded internet to help us visualize the path between community vision and the strategies and tools for capitalizing on urbanism’s bonuses? And wouldn’t it be great if such a resource also provided a ton of high-quality research to back up the pitch for prioritizing such strategies?"