• Ask the Expert
• Community Land Use Change Drivers Map Server Tool
• Expertise Database
• INVEST: Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services Tool
• Land Use Glossary
• Land Use Summit Prosperity Team Toolboxes
• Master Plan and Zoning Ordinance Library
• Michigan Jeopardy
• Michigan Landscape Fragmentation Tool
• Michigan Tipping Point Tool
• MIplace Toolkit 
• Smart Growth Readiness Assessment Tool
• SGLI Smart Growth Toolkit
• T.I.D.E. Community Assessment Tool
• Wind Prospecting Tool

Ask the Expert
This tool is a series of nine online discussion forums for the public to dialogue with academic and other experts related to land use, economic development and sustainability. Join the Discussion.

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Community Land Use Change Drivers Map Server Tool
The PMT Community Land Use Change Drivers website presents a statewide view of some of the key variables that impact land use change. Users can visually see various information at the community level on a statewide view. Users can also bring up reports on specific communities and find which variables can be used to predict the communities future land use. Information gathered for the PMT framework and presented in the reports includes the social, economic, and environmental drivers within the states' communities.

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Expertise Database
This tool, which will be available soon, will provide a list of land use experts, including faculty, MSU Extension staff, local officials, and others.

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INVEST: Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services Tool
When the average resident of West Michigan thinks about the natural land in the region, they might think it has no value. They would be wrong-by at least $1.6 billion. That's the minimum total value associated with green infrastructure in the seven-county West Michigan region. The total-representing some, but not all acreage in the region--was carefully estimated using a new online tool called INVEST: Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services Tool.

Researchers at the Annis Water Resources Institute (AWRI) and Seidman College of Business at Grand Valley State University, along with colleagues at Michigan State University, developed the tool in cooperation with the West Michigan Strategic Alliance (WMSA) as part of its Green Infrastructure Initiative. People and Land and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation provided funding for the project.

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Land Use Glossary
The Citizen Planner Online program has put together a glossary of terms related to land use and planning and zoning. This glossary compliments their online training program to make it easier to understand terms that may be unfamiliar to most people. This is an excellant tool to help build one's land use vocabularly and to achieve a better understanding of planning and zoning.

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Land Use Summit Prosperity Team Toolboxes
These toolkits provide a wide variety of information useful for individuals working to enhance their community's economic performance through land use planning, quality of life improvements, strategic planning, economic development, Smart Growth, and other approaches.

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Master Plan and Zoning Ordinance Library
The Planning and Zoning Center at MSU has put together a website listing Michigan governments with a master plan and/or zoning ordinance that is now available. A list of counties, townships, cities, and villages with active web-sites is provided along with links to master plans and zoning ordinances that were made available online. Websites that contain compilations to master plans and zoning ordinances from around the United States is also provided.

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Michigan Jeopardy
Play this fun and informative game filled with trivia about Michigan. "People & Land for $200 Alex."

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Michigan Landscape Fragmentation Tool: Driving Factors Associated With Fragmentation and Parcelization in a Developing Michigan Landscape
Land Use is an important component of global change, yet the interdisciplinary nature of the interactions between different ecological, technological, social and economic drivers of land use remains to be eludicated. The land use/cover (LULC) system by nature is highly complex and only through a multidisciplinary approach we can improve our current understanding of the system.

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Michigan Tipping Point Tool
The Tipping Point web page provides county level maps and trends of Michigan's changing landscape to evaluate the inflection point where the transformation from one land use state to another results in a transition of an industry or ecosystem form one sytem state to another.

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MIplace Toolkit
The MIplace Initiative has developed a toolkit to help find state programs and tools that can be used to help bring placemaking to life in Michigan communities.

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Smart Growth Readiness Assessment Tool
This online tool provides educational material on the ten tenets of Smart Growth and permits communities to assess the degree to which their Master Plan, Zoning Ordinance, other regulations, and community leaders are ready to foster smart community growth.

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Smart Growth Leadership Institute's Smart Growth Toolkit
Smart Growth Leadership Institute (SGLI), through a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), developed the tools to help communities untangle the thicket of policies and procedures that get in the way of implementing smart growth strategies. The tools in the Smart Growth Implementation Toolkit can help community leaders take the first step of removing the regulatory obstacles to smarter growth. The tools can help your community level the playing field to encourage development that meets your community's goals and your citizens' aspirations.

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T.I.D.E. Community Assessment Tool
The world has changed. Some of the key indicators of economic development are waning, while others are emerging. In the New Economy, emerging key community components now include talent, innovation, diversity and the environment. To help communities assess how well they are doing in these key areas and to identify areas for improvement, LPI has created the free T.I.D.E. (Talent, Innovation, Diversity and Environment) Community Assessment Tool. The tool was developed to enable communities to understand the impact their assets have on job creation, and to allow them to explore their own asset base within these four categories.

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Wind Prospecting Tool
Wind energy development companies eye Michigan as a potentially important place to develop as part of the alternative energy market. In conjunction with state policy favorable to wind energy development, such as the passage of a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), a clear understanding of the best areas for wind development is vital. LPI has taken a first step in helping the wind energy industry identify suitable areas for development by developing a prototype Wind Prospecting Tool.

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This page will be updated frequently. Please visit again soon to learn about new tools as they become available.