{"id":398792,"date":"2022-01-29T00:12:42","date_gmt":"2022-01-29T00:12:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uat.esri.com\/en-us\/industries\/blog\/?post_type=blog&p=398792"},"modified":"2025-04-07T22:19:33","modified_gmt":"2025-04-07T22:19:33","slug":"a-geographic-approach-to-planning","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/industries\/blog\/articles\/a-geographic-approach-to-planning","title":{"rendered":"A Geographic Approach to Planning"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s no secret that geography is a key factor in all things related to planning and community development.\u00a0 Sometimes it\u2019s an influencing factor.\u00a0 Sometimes it\u2019s the main driver for a project and the reason why the public embraces or opposes it.\u00a0 GIS is the tool that helps us measure, analyze, and visualize geography. For many of its early years, GIS was out of reach of many planning professionals, because it required expensive hardware, client-side software, and usually multiple weeks of training.\u00a0 It was an investment many planners couldn\u2019t make, particularly if they had access to a GIS professional in their organization.\u00a0 But when you have people who aren\u2019t subject matter experts in planning involved in planning-focused analysis, it\u2019s very easy for information to get lost in translation.\u00a0 The emergence of web-based GIS has since evolved the role of planners in being able to efficiently access and utilize tools that help them make better, more sustainable, data-driven decisions, while simultaneously freeing up GIS staff to work on other crucial projects.\u00a0 Below are the five steps that utilize a modern geographic approach<\/a> to planning.<\/p>\n\n

Understand Neighborhood Characteristics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

TED Conference founder Richard Saul Wurman has an often-repeated quote, \u201cA map is a pattern made understandable, and understanding precedes action.\u201d GIS helps us understand the demographics, socioeconomic characteristics, housing situation, and more about individual neighborhoods.  Instead of relying on anecdotal and\/or dated information, GIS provides access to thousands of authoritative variables to generate a clear picture about the aspects, resources, and needs of a community.  Within the Esri platform, this is accomplished using ArcGIS Business Analyst Web App<\/a>.  This web-based approach provides an easy way to not only view and analyze the data, but collaborate with colleagues, property developers, elected officials, and the public, so that everyone is working off the same authoritative content. <\/p>\n\n

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Bivariate map of the Birmingham MSA showing a correlation between housing affordability and median household income.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n

Two of the outputs within the app include infographics (both templated and customized) and reports.  These provide valuable complements to the maps to help drive decisions about locating businesses, community needs, workforce information, spending behavior, and more.<\/p>\n\n

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Infographic and report generated in ArcGIS Business Analyst Web App showing employment overview and restaurant market potential for a given service area. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

Derive Business Intelligence<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

The permitting system is almost always the system of record in a planning department.  Usually, though, the data entry and analysis are done by a relatively small group within the organization. Despite that, there is useful information in the permitting system that can help decision-makers. This can be even more challenging with a legacy system in place, which is not uncommon, given the cost of permitting systems.  Planners, administrators, and elected officials need to be able to derive business intelligence from the permitting system.  Within the Esri platform, this is done with a web-based app called ArcGIS Insights<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n

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A workbook in ArcGIS Insights showing commercial permits since 2010. This content was populated with data from a spreadsheet found on the county\u2019s open data page. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

Even though the user is not a direct user of the permitting system, from a simple output from the system, they\u2019re able to use GIS to answer questions like:<\/p>\n\n