2005 CPC Summit, October 27-30, brings top planners and tool providers together in Orlando, Florida to tackle a real-world planning challenge.

The sixth Community Planning Collaborative (CPC) is a benchmark event in community planning.  PlaceMatters, a program of the Orton Family Foundation, has organized this path-breaking national event since 1998 to showcase the integration of public participation and decision-support tools in community planning.  

The CPC brings together some of the world?s most innovative planners and tool providers to apply best-in-class technologies and methods to an actual planning challenge in eastern Orange County, Florida.  A national audience will work side-by-side, ?charrette-style,? with local stakeholders and experts to evaluate alternative growth scenarios and impacts for this rapidly changing region.  At the CPC?s Tools Expo, participants can explore a variety of decision-support tools and find out how you can help address local planning challenges.  Featured tool providers and applications include:

• Renaissance Planning Group?s CorePlan tool used alongside Citilab's CUBE transportation technology to address land use and transportation issues
• Infracycle paired with CommunityViz visualization and decision-support software to evaluate fiscal impacts
• Florida Natural Areas Inventory assessing environmental impacts
• Smarter Land Use Project working with local stakeholders to help build collaborative relationships and identify regional assets that enhance a sense of community

Participants will also have the opportunity to receive training in the tools described above as well as Criterion?s INDEX, MetroQuest, SketchUp®, Neighborhood America and other planning tools. You?ll hear from former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, architect Gianni Longo, civic leader Robert Grow and other visionaries in the field and participate in interactive panels led by renowned experts on topics that include:

• ?Regional Visioning with Decision Support Tools?
• ?Lessons Learned from the Cutting Edge: Communities Adopting and Integrating Decision-Support Tools?
• ?Tools to Engage and Empower Low-income and Multicultural Stakeholder Involvement,?
• ?Web-based Approaches to Increasing Public Participation?