Best practices help for managing Zoning and other overlay layers that are tied to parcels.

Question

I am working on cleaning up the zoning layer and was looking for input at how others are managing this data. It is usually its own layer however keeping it aligned with the parcels is always a challenge. Has anyone made this a table that is joined by APN or added it as type in a parcel fabric? What do you feel is the best option for accuracy and ease of maintenance. I have not used the joined table functionality much, but this use case seams logical.

ArianaToth · Answer

I also recommend keeping the zoning as a separate feature class. I run into lots of communities that have split-parcel zoning, where the zoning does not align with parcel boundaries.

I further recommend creating a new zoning FC for major updates so you preserve a record of past zoning. I prefer to do that over adding additional attribute fields for zoning years because the parcel geometry changes enough where I'm working that I don't want to merge what used to be two separate  records into one and lose that data.

CKillian · Answer

I always found it easier to maintain a separate zoning layer independent from parcels.  Main reasons being that I did not maintain the parcel layer so many times I was unaware of parcel changes that caused issues within the zoning layer.

I also had several cases where the zoning did not align with parcel layers. Sometimes a new development would have several zoning classes before it was actually subdivided.

There were also issues where parcels were merged but the zoning should not have changed.  So when two parcels became one, the zoning changed to follow the parcel lines instead of staying split across the new parcel.

Just a few things to be aware of.

Dillon_Preston · Answer

If the table has a similar field as the parcel layer then a join could work. If you still need the two separate layers you just do a join to the zoning layer and use the field calculate to update the zoning.