Several years ago while reading scripture about a group of people who fled into exile and started a community, I reflected on the various activities they engaged in to create their community.  This led me to think about what are the core activities of any community.  While brainstorming this with my friend Mike Hathorne, we created an acronym to capture the various activities necessary for a community to be sustainable and for individuals to thrive.  The acronym PLACES was born, representing Play, Live, Academic, Community, Employ, and Shop activities.  As I’ve used this acronym to teach students and analyze communities, I continue to be amazed at the additional lessons the acronym teaches about community development–I’ve attempted to capture these in the adjacent GIF.

While many real estate developments boast a mix of uses and being a one-stop shop of live-work-play activities, I believe many of these lack a complete set of activities necessary for human fulfillment.  My hope is that communities will consider all of the PLACES activities and become aware of the timing, scale, and interconnection of such activities.

We have created the PLACES board game as a way to teach these lessons in a fun, beautiful way.

-Daniel Wright