Executive SummarySustaining Places: Best Practices for Comprehensive Plans is the result of a four-year effort by the American Planning Association (APA) to define the role of comprehensive plans in addressing the sustainability of human settlements. The comprehensive plan, also called the general plan or community master plan, is the officia lstatement of a local government establishing policies for its future long-range development. APA announced the Sustaining Places Initiative at the World Urban Forum in Rio de Janeiro in 2010, after which a 11-member Sustaining Places Task Force was appointed to explore the role of the comprehensive plan as the leading policy document and tool to help communities of all sizes achieve sustainable outcomes. The task force’s work culminated in the 2012 APA report Sustaining Places: The Role of the Comprehensive Plan Focusing on both the comprehensive planning process and its outcomes, the task force termed the process “planning for sustaining places” and the goal of that process, the desired outcomes, “sustainable communities”