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Land-Based Classification Standards—Session Outline |
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Sanjay Jeer, AICP
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© & Author Info |
The research department of the APA has been working with several federal, state, and local agencies over the past three years to develop new classification, coding, and data standards for land-use data. This session will unveil the new standards that will have widespread implications for how land-use data is collected, tabulated, and reported among the planning agencies around the country. It will also introduce ideas about how to integrate with existing standards, employ new technologies, and apply for current planning problems.
Why new land-use standards:
The principal purpose of the LBCS project is to ensure that a broad variety of land-based data now being collected and stored at the local, regional, state, and national levels in a variety of formats and classification systems be standardized so that such data would be compatible and, thus, easily transferable between jurisdictions, agencies, and institutions. While the use of such a revamped system would be voluntary, potential users would be strongly inclined to embrace such a system because it would increase opportunities for reciprocal data sharing, both horizontally, from geographic area to geographic area, and vertically, between local, regional, state, and national jurisdictions.
How will it work with GIS and other technologies?
The recent and anticipated proliferation of information-handling technologies (such as advanced relational databases and geographic information systems), the development of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure, as well as the promise of an expanded and enhanced national information infrastructure make this effort particularly timely. Moreover, the adoption of a revised classification system in light of new technologies would have significant productivity implications for the public sector in an era of scarce financial resources.
What is the scope of LBCS?
LBCS will broaden the subject matter of the original 1965 Standard Land Use Coding Manual. SLUCM addressed only matters pertaining to land use. Today, we find practitioners collecting, storing, and manipulating three broad categories of land-based information: (a) land-cover information related primarily to the existing natural environment; (b) land-use information related primarily to the existing built environment; and (c) land-rights information related primarily to fee and less-than-fee ownership and to development rights, such as those prescribed by zoning and other regulatory measures. The LBCS would create a classification system capable of accommodating all three categories of land-based information and not just land use.
What are the land-use dimensions?
LBCS will primarily focus on land-use dimensions pertaining to the following:
Activity: Land-use activity-based classification will address the traditional land-use planning need for knowing the exact activity associated with land uses.
Function: Land-use function will classify based on the economic function or the purpose of land. This dimension identifies the economic enterprise associated with land uses.
Structure: Structure-type classification will address the structural characteristic of land uses. Unlike previous classifications, this will be independent of activity and functions allowing classifications and data collections to separate out the site adaptation as represented by building type or other special site facility.
Site: The general site development characteristic will enable identification of land uses based on their broad development characteristic.
Ownership: Instead of defining public or private under each of the above dimensions, this new dimension will allow tracking of ownership independent of the other land-use dimensions.
What are the other dimensions?
There are several other dimensions that LBCS will not be classifying. Most notably are the vegetation, land cover, demographic, and such. These aspects are currently being developed by various other national organizations (mainly the Federal Geographic Data Committee) and LBCS will ensure that the land-use dimensions will be compatible with these.
What is the timeline?
We intend to have a finished product by October 1999. This will include conversion tools, GIS templates, metadata standards, definitions, and lookup tables to convert from SIC, NAICS, etc.
The complete project, to be published by the American Planning Association, will be available at http://www.planning.org/lbcs. Follow this link to also see other related publications, an online annotated bibliography, case studies and working papers, and multimedia online presentations, including interactive land-use maps with the new standard using GIS.
Sanjay Jeer, AICP
Principal Investigator, LBCS Project
American Planning Association