People, Profit, Planet – a Triple Bottom Line approach to Place Branding

Traditionally the success of our places has been measured through economic outcomes. How many visitors? How much did they spend? How many jobs were created? What happened to sales tax revenue, property values, or the tax base?

Those things are important. A strong economy, good jobs, investment, and a healthy tax base are important. But they are also a very short sighted way to determine whether a place is actually doing well or not.

Economic success alone doesn’t tell us what that success means for people. Are quality of life and opportunity improving? Do people feel connected to their community and culture? Are they benefiting from the growth happening around them?

It doesn’t tell us what is happening to the place itself. Are we improving our streets, neighborhoods, and public spaces? Are we protecting natural resources and landscapes? Are we strengthening the character of a place or slowly erasing the things that made it valuable in the first place?

That’s where the Triple Bottom Line becomes particularly useful for communities. The concept has been around since the 1990s in the business world and is traditionally framed as People. Profit. Planet. In his book, The Civic Brand: The Power & Responsibility of Place, CivicBrand co-founder Ryan Short adapts that framework specifically for communities: People. Profit. Place.

The term place captures our natural environment that the term planet attempts to cover, but expands the idea to also include the built environment as well. Our streets, neighborhoods, public spaces, historic buildings, and infrastructure.

Together, People, Profit, and Place give us a much more complete way to understand the health and success of a community and determine if we are actually making progress or not. The goal isn’t to make profit less important. It’s to raise the other two to the same level.

A community can become more economically valuable while losing some of the things that made people value it. Tourism can generate revenue while putting pressure on natural resources. Development can increase property values while erasing culture and character. Growth can create jobs while making it harder for the people who already live there to remain.

People, Profit, and Place aren’t competing priorities. They’re three equally important, interconnected measures of a community’s success. Sometimes they reinforce each other and sometimes there are real trade offs that need to be navigated. The point isn’t that every decision has to perfectly serve all three. It’s that all three should be considered when decisions are made and impact is measured.

This is  what makes a place brand a civic brand. Place branding can’t just be about attracting more visitors, investment, businesses, or attention. A civic brand has a responsibility to consider what that means for the people who live there and how it contributes to the place itself.

The goal isn’t simply a stronger economy or a stronger brand, it’s a stronger community.

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