Land Use Suitability Project | 2005 - 2008
Sustainable Sandhills received a STAR grant award from the US Environmental Protection Agency's Collaborative Network for Sustainability in 2005. The resulting three year project has engaged the region's planning, development and conservation communities in the design of a GIS-based land use decision support tool.
The goal is to integrate sustainability planning into the day-to-day operations of governments and communities in the Sandhills. This project has created a set of GIS models of land suitability to balance development, conservation and cultural interests. The models are intended to enhance each local community’s ability to assess the implications of their land-use priorities and desions.
A series of workshops and expert focus groups, involving hundreds of residents and professionals from across the region, were held in 2006 and 2007. Release 1 of the Suitability Models and Maps was presented to a group of 60+ professional planners and developers in September 2007.
Since then, the fully-functional Tool and on-site training sessions have been delivered to planning departments in each of our eight counties, where they are being used to inform land use decisions across our region! The Suitability models and maps have also been the foundation of two important regional planning initiatives:
- The land use section of a "Comprehensive Regional Growth Plan" (CRGP) by the Base Closure and Realignment Regional Task Force (BRAC RTF).
- A "Joint Land Use Study" (JLUS) for the Sandhills region surrounding Fort Bragg by the Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base Regional Land Use Advisory Commission (RLUAC).
Sustainable Sandhills and our Project Team are incorporating the experience gained by users of "Release 1" to update the models, re-run them on a refreshed regional GIS dataset, and issue "Release 2" of the Tool by November of 2008.
See the GRANT PROJECT RESOURCES section on the left hand tool bar above for more details on the Project history and particpants, the regional workshops and expert focus groups, pdf versions of the Suitability models and maps, and information about progress on Release 2 of the Tool in the Fall of 2008.
WANT MORE INFORMATION??
Click here to access a complete record of the project, including: workshops, GIS layers used, technical details of the suitability models, the resulting suitability maps, links to other planning initiatives that have used these project results, and our future plans to update and maintain the Tool.