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Economic Development In Its Place: why land use tools need an upgrade as communities face a perfect storm
October 2025by: Tracy Loh, Xavier De Souza BriggsThis report covers the traditional structure of land use and economic development and contrasts its games and leveraging points to a newer action framework that adopts meaningful goals and guiding metrics for economic development plans, attaches transparent rules for economic benefits, modernizes strategies to be inclusive, and expands local player participation. -
Robotaxis Aren't Coming, They're Here
March 2026This practitioner paper overviews autonomous vehicles and what local governments need to know and begin doing before implementation onto the streets. Cities need to consider that state legislation, local regulations, and the responsibilities and liabilities applicable. -
Dover, NH, A Map to Thoughtful Planning: Strategic Plan for the Department of Planning and Community Development
2017This strategic plan provides goals, objectives, actions, and outcome metrics for the city's planning deparment. -
A Performance Management Framework for State and Local Government: From Measurement and Reporting to Management and Improving
2010This guide identifies seven principles of performance management and how their initiation, implementation, and sustainability of practice can gain and keep the public's trust. -
Monitoring Outcome Quality in Planning
Town & Country Planning Tomorrow Series Paper 8, June 2007by: Matthew NoneThis briefing paper outlines potential metrics that could help local jurisdictions in England monitor and improve planning and development outcomes. -
South San Francisco, CA, Shape SSF Performance Metrics
2022This interactive web page provides performance metrics that track implementation of the city's comprehensive plan. -
Lewisville, TX, Planning Metrics
2025This web page provides a series of data visualizations for the city's planning department performance metrics. -
AI Agents: What Planners Should Know
Planetizen, April 30, 2026by: Thomas Sanchez, AICPThis blog post introduces the concept of agentic artificial intelligence (AI) and explores potential use cases for planning. -
Colorado Springs, CO, PlanCOS Indicator Dashboard and Annual Reports
2025This web page houses key indicators and annual reports from 2019 to 2022; covering residential density, lane miles per dwelling unit, infill and redevelopment activity, housing opportunity and attainability, culture and economic indicators, and active transportation infrastructure. -
Alexandria, VA, Department of Planning and Zoning Key Indicator Dashboard
2025This web page is the key indicator dashboard where KPIs are listed with arrow indicators for change since last, annual trend numbers, and small icons for more information. -
Castle Pines, CO, Strategic Plan: Community Dashboard
2025This web page is the Community Dashboard for Castle Pine’s Strategic Plan and outlines their priorities: maintain roads, community safety, financial health, development, and business health. -
Scottsdale, AZ, High Performance and Innovation
2025This web page houses the eight performance measure categories for Scottsdale, including: Community and Economic Development, and Transportation & Infrastructure. -
Los Angeles, CA, City Planning Department Performance Metrics
2025This web page holds the development activity and trends and the Environmental Impact Reports of the Los Angeles City Planning's Performance Management Unit. -
Malibu, CA, Planning Performance Metrics
2025This web page details Malibu Planning’s nine performance metrics. why the metric is important, and how the data was calculated. -
Philadelphia, PA, Department of Planning and Development: Our Results
2025This web page houses four dashboards for the Department of Planning and Development: land management, Neighborhood Preservation Initiative, Housing Action Plan, and PHLRentAssist dashboard. -
Minneapolis, MN, Community Planning and Economic Development (CPED) Department Impact 2024
2025This web page is a report on the impact of the Community Planning and Economic Development department and stories of their work and success in 2024. -
PeoriaStat: Staff Performance Measurement Guidelines
April 2017This guide contains questions and context planning departments can use for holding informational and conversational meetings with other departments in local government to share data for improving services. -
Getting Started: Performance Management for Local Government
2019This guide emphasizes what is important in performance management for local governments to know, i.e. what data is meaningful, what does it say that is actionable, what method fits the service and the process. -
Cost Effectiveness: A Systems Approach to Analysis of Urban Services
JAPA 34(5), 1968by: Michael TeitzThis article is an early discussion on the use of the Planning-Programming-Budgeting system, introduced by the Department of Defense in an extension to urban planners and how cost and effectiveness models can build action structures. -
Government Performance Measurement Should Focus on What Matters
2023by: Jessie O'BrienThis article recognizes the benefits of tracing planning processes and outcomes but underlines the importance in the story the data can tell, not just its collection. -
Dos and Don'ts: Tips for Strengthening Your Performance Management Systems
January 2022by: Harry Hatry, Katherine Barrett, Richard GreeneThis guide breaks down performance management into five components: collecting, analyzing, presenting, disseminating, and using performance data and findings. -
Checklist: Performance Information for the Public
November 2017This fact sheet shares the basics of reporting performance information to the public, such as being transparent about the goals and timeline, sticking to what’s comprehensible and useful, and providing context and explanations on a basis that’s manageable and continuous. -
Lessons from Performance Management Leaders: A Sample of Larger Local Governments in North America
January 2013by: Shayne KavanaghThis report looks at the leader's role in creating and delegating performance measures as both a tool for learning and for implementation outcomes, and the acceptance and application of performance management in local government in sample cities across North America. -
Transforming Performance Measurement for the 21st Century
July 2014by: Harry HatryThis report outlines performance measurement and performance management and how the approach and implementation of both can lead to better governance and communication with constituents. -
Monitoring the Outcomes of Planning: A Research Study
August 2018This article represents a study in Scotland over monitoring outcomes related to completed project development to understand what value may have been added to the place and to represent what role the development had in value added. -
Why Performance Matters: The World Is Flat for Local Governments Too
April 2006by: Michael Lawson, AICPThis report summarizes the potential use of performance measures in a globalizing world and what role the local government must lead in learning and utilizing. -
User Fee Study – City of Kentwood, Michigan
October 2023This case study identifies the current cost of services, fees, and subsidies across the local government and recommends what the fees should be to decrease the reliance on other funding sources and fill the gap. -
States, Citizens, and Local Performance Management
September 2000by: Patricia Dusenbury, E. Blaine Liner, Elisa VinsonThis report analyzes how states and local governments integrate performance management and strategic planning into a practice of results-based governance. -
Split-Rate Property Taxation in Detroit
Recommendations and Findings, April 2022by: John Anderson, Nick AllenThis briefing paper covers split-rate tax operations and its increased efficiency in the property tax system. -
Linking Fiscal Stress & Social Equity: A Municipal Toolbox
Local Fiscal Stress, December 2017by: Austin Aldag, Natassia Alexandra Bravo Arredondo, Mark Cassidy, Alfie Rayner, Zachary SmallThis toolkit explores the application of property tax cap overrides, land banks and trusts, PILOTs, and community benefits agreements as responses to the issues of property tax caps, declining populations, tax-exempt properties, and challenges related to economic development. -
Revenue Guide for Washington Counties
November 2024This guide outlines in-depth how to evaluate existing and potential revenue sources through key considerations, voted and non-voted, by understanding the fiscal health of a county and its limits and desires. -
Governance Structures and Financial Authority in Submunicipal Districts
Municipal Revenues and Land Policies, Chapter 9, May 2010by: Robert Wiegers, AICP, Richard FeiockThis book chapter analyzes the structure of governing boards of submunicipal governments by their size, degree of professionalization, and process of election or appointment, in an evaluation of impact on revenues and expenses of the board’s own making. -
Strengthening Local Government Finances: State and Federal Aid Policies for a Crisis Era
April 2021by: Amanda Kass, Philip Rocco, Isabella RomanoThis report explores how state and federal aid in economic downturns can protect local governments’ vulnerability to procyclical pressures. -
Does TIF Make It More Difficult to Manage Municipal Budgets?
Municipal Revenues and Land Policies, Chapter 11, May 2010by: David MerrimanThis book chapter explores the design of TIFs and the impact of their financial volatility on municipal revenues and the subsequent practicality of their use. -
Public-Private Partnerships: What Local Government Managers Need to Know
December 2017by: Lawrence MartinThis briefing paper analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of public-private partnerships (P3s) as a tool to increase development of economic and social infrastructure. -
The Effects of Development Impact Fees on Local Fiscal Conditions
Municipal Revenues and Land Policies, Chapter 7, May 2010by: Gregory BurgeThis book chapter examines the trends of uses of development impact fees in states, specifically Florida, and the fiscal conditions in which the fee operates. -
Nonprofit PILOTs
November 2016by: Daphne Kenyon, Adam LangleyThis guide underlines the important role that PILOTs could play in localities where nonprofits hold a high share of profitable land, and offers recommendations on how to implement a program that fosters a shared community responsibility between the two parties. -
Payment in Lieu of Taxes
November 2010by: Daphne Kenyon, Adam LangleyThis report provides an understanding and guidelines to PILOT programs and how they can fit into a municipal budget where both parties benefit. -
Land Value Capture in the United States
September 2022by: Gerald KorngoldThis report introduces the wider use of land value capture and its tools to use what exists in the built environment to leverage paying for infrastructure or other development projects. -
How States Provide Cities with General Revenue
September 2020by: Amanda Kass, Michael Pagano, Farhad OmeyrThis report focuses on state intergovernmental revenue distribution to local governments and the three common approaches to fund distribution during a period of decline in state aid allocation. -
City Budgets in an Era of Increased Uncertainty
July 2018by: Michael Pagano, Chris HoeneThis report presents the status of cities across the U.S. based on their financial structure and fiscal constraints dependent upon local and state frameworks. -
Land Value Return
January 2020by: Lourdes Ferman, Allison BernsteinThis tool kit identifies eight tools for land value capture and their jurisdictional examples as methods for leveraging the increased public use to pay for supportive infrastructure. -
Financing Cities
Municipal Revenues and Land Policies, Chapter 2, May 2010by: Robert InmanThis book chapter discusses the role of local public finance in city productivity and provision of public services, by analyzing agglomeration economies and the role of politics and markets in public services. -
US Local Government Finance Tools
April 2021This fact sheet outlines different sources and pathways of revenue for local governments and the limits on increasing those sources of funds. -
How Local Government Raise Revenue - and What it Means for Tax Equity
December 2024by: Rita Jefferson, Galen HendricksThis interactive map depicts local taxes in relation to property taxes, consumption taxes, local income taxes, and other taxes across the U.S. -
Putting Assets to Work
2025by: Ben McAdams, Kyle Wedberg, Victoria Petro-EschlerThis web page utilizes the strategy of leveraging the property and assets that a local government already owns to fund projects toward public benefit. -
Establishing Government Charges and Fees
February 2014This guide supports the development of well-designed user fees by considering important questions like the direct and indirect cost of providing the service, the rate of review, the rationale behind the need for the fee, and the engagement and transparency with the public. -
Property Taxes and Local Autonomy: An Overview
The Property Tax and Local Autonomy, Chapter 1, 2010by: David Brunori, Michael Bell, Joan YoungmanThis book chapter outlines the necessity of local autonomy over local finances and the relevant discussions in this book on different revenues and their subsequent strain or limitation on the local government and its people. -
Benefits of Well-Designed User Fees
December 2014by: Brian ByrdThis briefing paper details what a user fee is and how local governments can implement them in a method that does not disproportionately affect those who cannot afford to pay. -
Unpacking the State and Local Tax Toolkit: Sources of States and Local Tax Collections (FY 2020)
August 2022by: Katherine Loughead, Jared Walczak, Eddie KoranyiThis toolkit procures the data of the breakdown of state and local tax collections for all U.S. states.