Overview

The Resilient Communities Scorecard is a checklist of questions to help Vermont communities assess their resilience in key areas including land use, transportation, energy, and healthy community design. Knowing where your community stands is a first step toward developing goals, action steps, and investment strategies that build or reinforce resilience.

This tool builds on the original Smart Growth Scorecard, which assessed how well municipalities were prepared for the pressures of change, especially sprawl. Growth and change are neither positive nor negative; they are simply processes. 

This updated tool will help communities address today’s difficult challenges — like incremental and scattered development, rising energy costs, and climate change — and help position them to meet those challenges.

The Scorecard is not intended for ranking or comparing communities, or designed to be used as a community survey to assess community members’ preferences and perceptions about resilience and smart growth.

Audience

The Scorecard can be used by different groups, including the local planning commission, or other local officials, for their own guidance; community leaders, to prepare for public meetings or planning sessions; citizens interested in public involvement in planning and decision-making; community and interest groups or the media.