Sustainable Communities Index

Healthy Development Checklist

This checklist or prior versions has been used to evaluate land use plans in San Francisco and elsewhere.  The checklist is designed to facilitate application by planners, project sponsors, or community stakeholders.  

Similar to the organization of the Sustainable Communities Index Indicators, this development checklist includes criteria for diverse community health objectives organized under seven Elements. Development criteria represent actions that, if taken, help achieve improvements in Community Health Objectives. The accompanying User’s Guide provides local, state and national regulatory standards related to some particular development criteria.  

Using the Checklist

1. For each development criteria, users first assess whether the criteria is relevant to the project. For example, some criteria apply only to particular classes of projects (e.g. residential, commercial)
2. Next the user will evaluate whether the project meets the criteria. There are three responses.
   • Yes, development criteria met ‐ A project meets development criterion and there is documentation to verify conformance.
   • No, development criteria not met ‐ A project does not meet a development criterion. At this point, a project sponsor may consider modifications to the project so that achieves the criterion.
   • Insufficient information to evaluate the project ‐ this is checked when the project does not provide sufficient information to evaluate the development criterion.
3. Third, the user lists documentation or information that verifies the projects conformance with the criteria. This information may be listed on the checklist or provided as supplemental supporting information.

Caveats

Users of the Healthy Development Checklist should be aware of several limitations:

• The checklist is primarily geared towards assessing large‐scale residential, commercial, or mixed‐use residential development projects.
• Not all criteria may be applicable to all project types. For example, some criteria are applicable to a limited class of projects (e.g., schools, health facilities).
• The checklist does not include development criteria for all indicators in the Sustainable Communities Index.
• Use of the checklist is voluntary.

Click here to download a copy of the Healthy Development Checklist & User's Guide