The Place Standard with a Climate Lens has been developed to help people understand how climate change might play out in a local area and support them to design their future place with climate in mind.

It builds on the core Place Standard tool and is designed to support a joined up, collaborative, and participative approach to climate action within a place. 

The project has been jointly led and delivered by Sniffer, Sustainable Scotland Network and Architecture & Design Scotland, together with and funded by Public Health Scotland and Scottish Government.

The Climate Lens includes a suite of tools for facilitators and organisers of Place Standard sessions, including:

  • extra guidance and questions in the main Place Standard tool guidance
  • a climate change prompt document for facilitators,
  • a glossary of terms,
  • support videos,
  • online and in person-tools to help facilitators host effective climate-focussed sessions 

Place Standard with a Climate Lens: co-creating local climate solutions

The Place Standard with a Climate Lens provides step-by-step support on how to to develop productive conversations focussed on the important relationship between climate and place.

The Climate Lens follows the same, easy to use approach as the core Place Standard tool. Adding the Climate Lens to Place Standard sessions will help to consider how big trends such as climate change and decarbonisation might affect a place. This document should give you everything you need to get started using it.

Access the Climate Lens here

Climate Lens- Abridged Guidance

An abridged version of the Climate Lens is also available. This shorter version has been developed specifically for facilitators and contains the principles and process for delivering an effective Climate lens conversation.

Access the abridged Climate Lens guidance here

The tool can help communities consider climate change mitigation (how their place will transition to a net zero future when fossil fuels are no longer used) and climate change adaptation (how their place could better cope with extreme weather as the climate changes).

Additional Climate Lens resources

We have developed a range of Climate Lens resources - including presentation slides, online whiteboard templates, and printouts - to help you get started. Feel free to adapt them to suit the needs of your own Place Standard with a Climate lens assessment or to develop your own supporting resources.

Further/Additional Climate Lens resources

Getting started - early adopters

A workshop for early adopters was held online on 25th October 2022 to introduce the new Climate Lens resources, share learning from the pilot projects, and help people get started. The 55 attendees included a range across Scotland from varied backgrounds - more details in the project Final Report.
You can watch the recording of this workshop to help you get started too.

Watch the Early Adopters workshop

Place Standard Tool with a Climate Lens - Final Report!

The final winter 2022 project report includes details of how the Place Standard Climate Lens materials have evolved and results from the pilot projects in which they were put to the test across Scotland.

Access the Final Project Report about the Climate lens here

Collaborating to create a climate lens

The project team worked together to develop Place Standard Climate Lens materials and piloted them in real situations with 10 placemaking projects from across Scotland. These were chosen to represent the varied communities, landscapes, scales and type of project where the climate lens might be used and provided feedback which was used to refine and finalise the materials.
The Summer 2022 project report describes some of the process behind the development of the Climate Lens.

Access the summary interim report about the Climate lens here