Urban Planning: Location Decisions

Scenario

 

Choosing a place to live is a complicated decision influenced by many factors. One needs to balance personal preferences with work, budget, and family constraints. In this exercise, we made decisions about where to live using demographic data, property information, and such spatial factors as proximity to important landmarks. We prioritized the preferences by giving some factors more weight than others.

 

Background

 

Alachua County is a county located in the state of Florida (United States). The 2010 Census conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau reports a county population 247,336. The county seat is Gainesville, Florida, home of the University of Florida, and is also known for its diverse culture, local music, and artisans. Census 2000 reported 37.2% of Alachua County‘s workforce is related to education (Census.gov).

Analysis

First one has to examine the data, complete map documentation, and set the environments.  Then begin the analysis and to prepare the displays needed to address the problem. A good place to start any GIS analysis is to produce a locational or basemap to better understand the distribution of features in the geographic area being studied. A basemap of Alachua County showing places and federal lands.

The first analysis (Even Weight) is rather like asking my mother-in-law what she likes the best. She usually says that she “likes them all the same” which means we make basic set of decision now and their preferences surface later.
So divining, what the customers want at the beginning is very helpful since it at least provides a target. In this case we learn about the grandparents weighting of 40/40/10/10 percent. The weighting clearly shows the emphasis on their children and grandchildren.
The recommendation is really anywhere in the highlighted area (look at Weighted Results map). Most of the selected area is 3 to 5 miles from the children. The bus routes, take you right to the hospital, the school, and too the neighborhood. More refinement should be made after they visit some of the community centers. Also, they should look at the three areas (blue, red and yellow areas) to see what neighborhoods really strike their fancy. The grandparents can them make that target smaller/larger with more refinements on their needs. Note the choices above emphasized the proximity to the children’s home/Hospital and University and lessened the impact of age ratio and house values. There was only are that did not have any impact from either scenario. Notice that since the children live Near the Hospital, the proximity analysis works for either the children’s’ home or Hospital. That in effect eliminates the need for one map and simplifies the assessment.

 

A key use of GIS in many businesses is to support decision making, such as where to site new locations. Deciding where to locate a business comes from weighing a variety of factors, such as population density, income level, distance from competitors, traffic, etc. One of the challenges is to decide what weight (prominence) to give the various factors. In this week’s activity, I use weighted overlays in ArcGIS making this task fairly simple. Before moving on, brainstorming the factors that might go into a particular location decision (e.g., where to build a new school or rent an apartment near a college) and consider how one may weight each of these factors (1-10).

 

Learning objectives: Upon completion of this week’s activities, be able to:

1. Explain how GIS is being used in urban and regional planning
2. Describe how planners can use GIS
3. Describe how a GIS enables demographic analysis
4. Track changes to spatial features over time.
5. Explain how land use and zoning plans are used to monitor existing urban activities
6. Calculate Euclidean distance 
7. Classify rasters using a defined interval 
8. Calculate values using formulas 
9. Convert features to rasters 
10. Create a model and run various models 
11. Use the weighted overlay process setting both scale and percentage

The connections for this week’s activities are the following:

• Business, marketing
• Public administration
• Government

1.  Deliverable 1- A basemap of Alachua County including places, public lands, roads, and census tract the couple from project 1 chose to live within (given).
2.   Deliverable 2- (2 or 3maps) A single layout view showing a map of each of or a combination of the following parameters: 
      • Distance from grandkids (original couple’s location)
      • Distance from North Florida Regional Medical Center
      • Distance from University of Florida
      • Distance from Community Centers
      • Census tracts highlighting percentage of population Age 65 and up
      • Census tracts showing median house value
      • Bus routes
3.  Deliverable 3- A map showing two different weighted overlays.

1. Process Summary (Student Worksheet): Explain your steps.
2. Final Report for Grandparents/Clients