Join Plan NH

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Mission

Our New Hampshire-focused membership is comprised of architects, landscape architects, engineers, planners, building and real estate professionals, lawyers, financial and insurance firms and others with an interest in promoting and implementing environmentally, economically and socially sustainable communities.  This diversity of membership brings a unique variety of views and perspectives to our approach to shaping New Hampshire’s built environment.

Plan NH works with organizations throughout the state towards realizing a vision of an economically, environmentally and socially vibrant New Hampshire in which:

  • Towns and neighborhoods balance necessary development with preserving their unique, traditional characteristics
  • Mixed-use centers, including affordable residential spaces,  are encouraged
  • Natural resources, open areas and  undeveloped land are protected and  honored
  • Traditional and creative ways of getting about minimize the need for fossil-fueled vehicles
  • Clean energy for heat and power becomes standard
  • Collaboration and cooperation between  and among towns and regions  enhance the vitality of life in the Granite State.

Plan NH champions principles and ideas that balance building projects – and this would include anything built in the public realm, such as buildings, roads, bridges, memorials, public sculpture – with

  • The needs of people – where they live, how they get about, what services are necessary, what they value.
  • maintaining the “sense of place” of our towns, cities and villages that make them unique – including preserving historic assets, open spaces, agriculture and farming
  • protecting our air, water, flora and fauna

Plan NH fulfills its mission through promoting Smart Growth and other sustainability principles via

  • The Community Design Charrette program – an exercise in which local citizens and Plan NH volunteers come together to explore potential solutions to planning or design issues in individual New Hampshire towns.
  • Informational programming for members and others interested in sustainable design and development in the communities in which they work and/or live.
  • Recognition of outstanding examples of work that reflects Plan NH’s Mission through a Merit Awards program
  • Scholarship programs that support students from New Hampshire who are studying in a field related to the Mission
  • The Vibrant Villages New Hampshire initiative.  Vibrant Villages will focus on four broad categories that, together, we believe are an important foundation for a  sustainable community: The initiative will provide stories, ideas and tools – examples of what is happening right here in New Hampshire –  to inform and inspire us to new ways of thinking about our futures here in the Granite State.
    • Growing healthy towns while preserving our rural character
    • Looking at how we get about
    • Where we live
    • Our historic resources – our past that has shaped who we are today