Land Use Studies

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While the analysis of historical trends is an important part of any comprehensive study, the Operations Research and Education Laboratory (OREd) Land Use Studies provide a forward-looking data-driven view of a school district’s growth potential.

Integrated Planning for School and Community (IPSAC) is supplemented by comprehensive land use studies of the school district that quantify future growth by school attendance areas. The Land Use Studies include two components: community interviews and geographic information systems (GIS) analysis.

The purpose of the community interviews are to capture stakeholders’ knowledge and perceptions of key trend indicators, factors encouraging growth, factors constraining growth, and transportation and water/sewer issues that may impact residential and non-residential developments. A critical task of the community interviews is to locate and identify all new and planned residential subdivisions.

A spatial analysis based on geographic information systems parcel data provides quantitative data concerning available parcels and subdivisions lots that can be used to identify areas of future growth. Student demographic analysis can also be conducted at this stage to better understand socio-economic components that may influence school assignment decisions.

Read description of this map and view larger image in printable PDF format. (315 KB) *

Working closely with the school district and municipal GIS department, OREd identifies student residences to study student population for each subdivision. The graph shows student locations and the parcel outline. The GIS subdivision analysis tabulates number of parcels, number of developed parcels, and number of students in the subdivisions. From these data OREd can construct the student generating potential for existing, new, and planned subdivisions.

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