Have you ever wanted to change something about your neighborhood or town, but didn’t know where to start? Or passed through green streets or traffic-calm roads of a neighboring community and wondered how they did it?

You’re in luck. RPA is excited to launch Design Your Town - an interactive web-based resource for citizen planners, professionals and anyone concerned about the quality of the villages and landscapes where they live.

This website has attractive and sustainable designs for different kinds of places as well as the details, policies and regulations needed for implementation. You can start by picking the kind of place you want to fix - from downtowns to rural villages – or by searching through best practices for landscape design, connectivity and mixed-use development.

And if you want to participate in this effort, suggest a case study or implementation tool.

“In our work around the New York region supporting communities and municipalities in planning efforts, we’ve found that so many people are enthusiastic to improve their streetscapes, to provide better access to nature or to promote better connectivity and transit access but simply don’t know where to start. The goal of Design Your Town is to share the tools to help professionals and residents achieve those goals,” said Rob Lane, senior fellow for urban design at Regional Plan Association. ​“As we prepare to release the fourth regional plan this fall, we want to put these kinds of tools in the hands of the community stakeholders so they can be partners in shaping the region.”

Design Your Town is a collaboration of Regional Plan Association, the Orange County Department of Planning, the Pace University Land Use Law Center and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, with additional funding from the Hudson River Valley Greenway.