Beyond Land Use Maps: GIS for Urban & Regional Planning Webinar Q&A

[BrianBaldwin]

Earlier this summer, we held a webinar featuring Dr. Perry Yang from Georgia Tech and Dr. Barbara Faga from Rutgers University discussing their uses of GIS in their classrooms and studios.

If you missed the webinar, you can catch it here: https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/beyond-land-use-maps-gis-for-urban-amp-regional/ba-p/1...

During the webinar, we received a wide-array of great questions from the audience that we didn’t have the time to answer. With the help of Barbara and Perry, this Q&A blog hopes to answer some of the top questions that participants sent in.

Answers below are from:

• Brian Baldwin, Senior Solution Engineer, Esri
• Dr. Barbara Faga, Rutgers
• Dr. Perry Yang, Georgia Tech

 

Could you please give me more information about StoryMaps and their relevance in contemporary GIS?

Based on years of professional experience I concluded that clients do not want or read long reports. We began using StoryMaps and ArcGIS Urban for our studio presentation in 2019 and found the process collaborative, engaging, and adapted easily to graphics and print. Employers expect students to know the newest, best products when they graduate and to date everyone is impressed with StoryMaps. Students work in powerpoint and other programs and begin to insert everything into StoryMap after midterm. They like the organized process because it is easy to edit and insert. I like it because it is so much better than editing a long doc. Our studio clients like it because it is new. And employers want our graduates to know the latest products – it’s a win for everyone.

Students still need to know the 'core' concepts and theories of GIS, but they also need better tools and methods to present their findings. StoryMaps offer a great way to share results wthin an engaging narrative. You don't need to be a GIS Specialist to consume a StoryMap.

 

What types of GIS skills do students have before they participate in the studio class?  Who has been doing the data analytics with the real time data? Bringing students up to speed with these different technologies is the challenge.  

Students are encouraged to take “Introduction of GIS” before they take the studio. For those who had no experiences, a tutorial series was offered for students to be familiar with ArcGIS Pro, Online and Urban.

A small number of students are particularly interested in how high frequency data, such as GPS and Google Popular Time data can be used in mapping urban activities. The Studio also offers tutorials for them to test the data. 

 

Are there any blogs or online resources of "Best Practices" for utilizing ArcGIS Hub and ArcGIS Urban for community engagement?  I am developing an ArcGIS Hub for community engagement but also want to have the ability for deeper engagement through the Urban scenario development. 

Great idea -- we have three ongoing projects with complicated community engagement.   Please contact me with your thoughts and we will participate.

There are a number of good Hub examples in this gallery page: https://hub.arcgis.com/pages/gallery

 

Question about City Engine and where it fits within Brian's Buckets. Is it a product that has a longer term lifespan, or is ArcGIS Urban the way to go in terms of teaching GeoDesign?

CityEngine still has a long shelf-life here at Esri (for details on ‘what’ CityEngine is, view the product page: https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/products/arcgis-cityengine/overview ). The software wasn’t featured heavily in the webinar because it does require a bit more time to learn and use in a classroom or studio setting. CityEngine can be a great compliment to ArcGIS Urban. After students use ArcGIS Urban to determine zoning and land use, they can use CityEngine to design realistic forms.

 

Typically when proposals to run a highway through a neighborhood (particularly in marginalized communities) the claim is that it will make “improvements” to the local area (e.g. temporary construction jobs), but the reality is that unless the neighborhood is wealthy (e.g. Brooklyn Heights) they don’t have the political power to ensure that a park or pedestrian promenade is included as part of the highway project.  So, unless there is a socially conscious planner on the board how can Esri help these communities when they don’t even have political power or the resources to ensure that their neighborhoods won’t be irreparably harmed?

Esri provides low-cost, non-profit licenses, free licenses to K-12 schools, and low-cost licenses for higher education. While the licenses are there, we need more people to help train and empower marginalized communities to show them HOW they can use these tools to effect change. Not speaking for Esri, but my hope would be that students, faculty, and communities utilize the licenses in situations like the one described above. It would be fantastic to help make those connections and facilitate those discussions.

 

I am wondering if there is a MOOC (massive open online course) on urban form and urban design?

 There is not yet - but I will recommend that we get one created!

 

I was thinking about the strategic role of collaboration among different Universities with different experiences and backgrounds. Do you have any recommendations for specific forms of collaborations?

Rutgers/Bloustein is collaborating with NJIT and UPENN on the design and zoning plans for the neighborhoods adjacent to Newark Liberty Airport (EWR). We began a design studio in the South Ward with Newark’s Planning Dept in 2017. The association has produced eight design studios. We are funded to put together a series of four community meetings to prepare a draft community benefits agreement (CBA) with EWR, the City, and the South Ward. If you would like more information, please let me know. 

The NY/NJ APA sponsored a graduate studio showcase each year prior to the pandemic. NYU, Columbia, Pratt, Hunter, and Rutgers participated. Hopefully, we will all participate in Spring 2023. Students enjoyed the opportunity to see what the other universities were doing in their studios.

 

Question for Professor Yang: Considering GIS tools, how were students prepared to use them? In a previous cycle? Or was it at the same time that they were already applying the tools in the Tokyo cases?

In Georgia Tech’s planning programs, all students are required to talk “Introduction of GIS”, and would be familiar with ArcGIS Pro. ArcGIS Urban is new to us. We got the support from ESRI to organize a series of tutorials on Urban.

 

For Professor Faga: Could you list the main GIS tools you used in the case studies?

ArcGIS, Urban, CityEngine, and StoryMaps 

 

Is there a way ArcGIS software can be updated to always autosave?

This setting doesn’t exist in ArcMap - but it can be enabled/disabled in ArcGIS Pro.

 

How do you deal with students who only have a Mac? Parallels/Bootcamp is not very effective in running ArcGIS on a Mac.

There are a wide-range of different options for getting ArcGIS Pro running on a Mac. I would recommend looking through this blog to see what might work best for your specific situation: https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-pro/announcements/virtualization-of-arcgis-from-the... 

 

One more question to Perry: Does ArGIS Urban help you produce those environmental impacts with the default software? Or do you need a separate model/plug-in?

ArcGIS Urban offers a platform for simple accounting of energy, water and waste based on land uses and population density. Some environmental performance measures or modeling are to be run in separate platforms. For instance, building energy would need other engines like Energy Plus to consider factors beyond 2D land uses and 2.5 building information, such as materials, window to wall ratio, HVAC and occupants’ time scheduling that can’t be done in current GIS. 

 

I am particularly interested in the use of GIS to aid in community decision-making.  Do any of you have examples of community stakeholders demonstrating new understanding and therefore shifting their priorities and  making different (presumably better) decisions as a result of using these tools?

The community surveys are successful. Students put the surveys together in English & Spanish for several grad studios. Students tested the surveys with Bloustein School students and faculty. The cities/towns linked the surveys into their websites, and we had over several hundred responses the next day. Once our clients saw the word maps from the surveys the information was clear, and we did not have to spend a lot of time collecting additional data.

 

Hi everyone, I am Sanele from South Africa, we recently experienced devastating floods in the province of KwaZulu-Natal with so many people still missing after being swept by floods. My question is, can GIS be used to map areas susceptible to floods especially near the coastline, because what I noticed is our rivers have a siltation problem where riverbeds get filled with sedimentation, hence water rises and makes it easy for floods to occur. I personally believe the missing persons are buried under the silt to date.

I'm sorry to hear about the recent flooding Sanele. GIS can be used to model and analyze data related to floods. The biggest question is simply what data exists and at what resolution for the analysis. After a quick web search, here are a couple of results that you could investigate further:

• Flood Impact Analysis: https://doc.arcgis.com/en/arcgis-solutions/latest/reference/introduction-to-flood-impact-analysis.ht...
• Flood Succeptibility: https://www.gislounge.com/how-to-use-arcgis-pro-to-map-flood-susceptibility/