Our Classes and Services
Customizable Learning Experience
Planning 101: Who Decides What Gets Built?
This foundational session demystifies how planning works—zoning, land use, and the roles of different departments. Residents learn who holds decision-making power, how public input is (or isn’t) used, and how to get involved early and effectively.
Power Mapping for Local Change
This class teaches residents how to identify key players and institutions in their community. Participants create local power maps to see who influences planning decisions—and where they can build alliances to shift outcomes.
Understanding Place-Based Inequities
Participants explore how historical and current policies have shaped patterns of racial, economic, and environmental injustice. Residents map the inequities in their own neighborhoods and begin connecting these patterns to planning decisions.
Spatial Thinking for Everyday Advocates
Residents practice reading and analyzing maps, development proposals, and public meeting agendas. They gain skills in asking spatial questions like: Who benefits? Who’s left out? What are the long-term impacts on this place?
Tools for Speaking Up: Meetings, Hearings, and Public Comment
Participants learn how to show up powerfully in public spaces—how to prepare for meetings, give effective testimony, organize neighbors, and navigate common roadblocks when engaging with city staff or elected officials.
Designing Solutions with (Not Just For) Community
This session focuses on co-creation and visioning. Residents and practitioners explore how to develop equitable solutions together, using real-life scenarios to practice designing with community—not just delivering to them.
Group Learning
Whether you're a neighborhood organization, housing agency, health clinic, or city department, Knowledge. Place. Power. offers customized group learning experiences that bring residents, staff, and community partners together to explore how power, planning, and place shape daily life.
Our group programs are designed to:
Build shared understanding across roles and sectors
Equip participants with practical tools for spatial thinking and equitable engagement
Strengthen resident voice in decision-making processes
Support collaborative strategies that lead to more just, inclusive outcomes
Each cohort benefits from facilitated sessions tailored to your community or planning timeline, interactive exercises rooted in lived experience, and optional group projects that apply what you learn to real-world challenges. We also provide private onboarding, flexible scheduling, and support aligned with your organization’s goals.
Let’s build power together—one place, one partnership at a time.
Engage in the Way That Works Best for You and Your Community
Knowledge. Place. Power. is designed to meet you where you are—literally. Whether you prefer learning in a group, on your own, or on the go, our program is available in multiple formats to fit your schedule, comfort, and capacity.
Join us online for live virtual sessions that foster real-time connection and dialogue with peers across communities.
Bring us in-person for workshops and facilitated learning rooted in your neighborhood, agency, or organization.
Learn at your own pace through our mobile app, which offers flexible, self-guided content you can access anytime, anywhere.
Each format offers the same commitment to equity, place-based insight, and practical tools—so you can choose the experience that works best for your community, your role, and your goals.
