Abstract
Growth pressure, concerns about climate change, and increased public involvement in planning are raising concerns for communities and planners. Planners and resource managers are looking for solutions for engaging the public, developing transparent planning processes, quickly generating and evaluating alternatives and developing quality plans with high likelihoods of being adopted and implemented. Easy to use planning support instruments such as keypad pilling and on-screen sketch tools integrate with geographic information systems based planning support systesm to allow planners to easily visualize and assess alternatives and demonstrate the incorporation of public values and transparency throughout planning processes. We present here several Australian project examples and demonstrate how these tools can facilitate analysing and quantifying alternative scenarios and economic, social and environmental aspects of planning proposals at the local and regional level.