Land Use and the Built Environment

City and County of Denver

Existing land use is a fundamental representation of the built environment in the field of urban planning. The distribution of uses can tell a lot about the character of a neighborhood or given study area. However, in many cases, property assessment tax classifications are extremely numerous and detailed, making it difficult for urban planners to analyze.

As a solution, Denver's Community Planning and Development Department (CPD) derived its own generalized land use layer in 2008, translating hundreds of tax classifications from the parcel database into twenty land-use categories that could be evaluated and compared citywide and across neighborhoods. ArcGIS software provided the framework for data processing and allowed for comparison against additional GIS datasets, including high-resolution aerial imagery, in order to verify land use. Parcel boundaries were modified in some locations for parks and rights-of-way.

CPD's generalized land use layer then became a foundation upon which an even more detailed representation of the built environment was developed. Building footprints, surface parking, and sidewalks from the city's wastewater impervious layer were integrated into the dataset, creating a land-cover model that could be displayed in 3D. Because this land use/land cover model represents the built environment at a subparcel level, in some cases it provides a more accurate representation of development patterns in a given area or neighborhood.

Courtesy of Community Planning and Development Department, City and County of Denver.

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