CommunityViz software helps users to visualize and analyze landuse options and communicate land use decisions. The GIS-based software allows users to explore many alternative land use scenarios and see associated socioeconomic and environmental impacts.

Summary

CommunityViz is a software package for planning, designed with a specific mission in mind: to assist decision makers in visualizing, analyzing, and communicating about potential futures of their communities. Through interactive maps, CommunityViz shows existing zoning and land-use plans and shows future build outs of communities by placing proposed and allowed structures on the landscape. Through the creation of scenarios and inputting various types of data, the program allows users to generate detailed analysis of different proposed land use plans and measures of their impacts.

The visual translations are effective in communicating options in land use zoning to local government officials and the interested public. Municipalities interested in adopting or amending zoning ordinances that reflect a departure from traditional zoning concepts would benefit from CommunityViz tools that can objectively and comprehensively evaluate the impacts of different land use approaches.

Track Record

In Pennsylvania, county planning offices, land use planning consultants, and non-profit conservation organizations are exploring the usefulness of CommunityViz in local planning efforts. The author of this tool has had conversations with several large and medium planning agencies and nonprofit organizations that have found the tool useful but time-consuming; as a result, they have been unable to dedicate the resources to fully implement the software in their service areas.

Typical End Users

Conservation Impact

CommunityViz can be a tremendous resource to municipalities and conservation organizations in visualizing and planning for the potential impacts of development in a specific communities or landscapes.
The software enables land use planners and municipal officials to identify priority areas for conservation.
Through its maps and reports, CommunityViz offers an effective outreach and communication tool for helping local municipal officials and their constituents understand the potential impact of land development as well as zoning and land use regulations in their community.
Through its scenario-building capabilities, users can visualize how various development strategies will translate on the ground; as a result, municipal officials can make more informed decisions in implementing long-term land use planning strategies.

What You'll Need

See the detailed description below under Technical Requirements for software and hardware requirements.
GIS-trained staff or consultant trained to use software; some level of planning expertise is also useful; required for using some of the more advanced features of the software.
Quality data sets (GIS, tabular numeric, etc)
Most municipalities will not have the expertise to fully utilize the power of CommunityViz without technical support and should work with a consultant or professional with GIS and CommunityViz experience.

Obstacles and Challenges

Requires financial commitment for purchase of CommunityViz® software and the basic GIS program, ArcGIS®.
Requires considerable investment in staff training or hiring of an experienced consultant.
May require considerable investment in staff time to implement a given analysis.
3D models may require significant effort, can be taxing on computer hardware, and may not be as effective as photos taken of the study area
Output analysis is only as good as the data being used for the analysis.

Contents of Main Description

Overview
What Makes CommunityViz a Great Planning Tool?
   Common Impacts
   Suitability Wizard
   TimeScope
   Scenario 3D
Technical Requirements
   Hardware Requirements
   Software Requirements
Case Studies
   Monroe Township (Cumberland County)
   Regional Growth Management and Regional Transportation Planning (Tri-County Regional Planning Commission, Central Pennsylvania)
   County Comprehensive Plan (Allegheny County, Pennsylvania) - What’s Your Favorite Place?
   Planning for Agriculture (Calumet County, Wisconsin) – Planning for Agriculture
   Comprehensive Transportation Planning (Mooresville, North Carolina) – Knitting Together  Land-Use and Transportation Decision-Making Through Scenario Planning

Overview

CommunityViz® is a GIS-based (add a link to the GIS glossary term) software developed by the Orton Family Foundation and is supported and distributed by Placeways, LLC. It is an extension to ArcGIS® software, which was developed by Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI).

CommunityViz is a decision-support planning tool designed to project and analyze development scenarios using existing spatial (GIS) and tabular (numerical) data, such as roadways, existing buildings, land use, zoning densities, and conservation areas. The software includes two components: 1) Scenario 360, which enables users to view, analyze and understand land-use alternatives and impacts and 2) Scenario 3D which is a visualization software that quickly creates realistic, interactive, geospatially accurate 3D scenes from two-dimensional maps.

Once existing data is mapped, the user can make a series of decisions about land use, density, and potential zoning to form one or more development scenarios. For instance, the scenario-builder, one of the software’s most powerful tools, can illustrate how potential changes may impact the physical form of the community, such as what it would look like to maintain a constant 3% residential growth rate, to reduce commercial setbacks on Main Street, or to add a low-density conservation overlay district in an endangered habitat area.

While its sketch tools and built-in assumptions allow users with limited GIS skills to use the software without extensive training, the software’s full potential involves a steep learning curve and its output is only as good as the data and logic that are applied. Both GIS skills and land use planning knowledge and experience are important in setting up the assumptions and formulas that are key to this land use analysis software. Most municipalities will not have the expertise to fully utilize the power of CommunityViz without technical support and should work with a consultant or professional with GIS and CommunityViz experience.

What Makes CommunityViz a Great Planning Tool?

CommunityViz helps the planning process because it:

creates a visual translation of zoning and land use regulations that can be modified to reflect various scenarios;
quickly and easily enables the user to create alternative scenarios, and conduct an effective build-out analysis (link to build-out analysis tool) of large areas with multiple zoning districts;
creates easy-to-read maps that highlight essential statistics and numbers;
highlights physical or geological constraints and non-buildable areas, providing a valuable planning tool for protecting significant natural resources;
enables users to incorporate as many variables into a planning scenario as they like, using standardized "decision tools" [glossary term]. They can also develop their own customized analyses;
acts as an effective outreach tool for educating the general public;
generates easy-to-read reports to be shared with planners, municipal officials and the general public.

Scenario 360

Scenario 360 is one of two components of CommunityViz software. An interactive tool for geographic decisions, Scenario 360 adds analysis tools and a decision-making framework to the ArcGIS platform. Scenario 360 helps users to analyze, visualize and communicate about land-use alternatives and their economic, environmental, and social impacts. Scenario 360 enables users to:

easily create and experiment with hypothetical scenarios
assess economic, environmental, social, and visual considerations
easily make and change assumptions
view impacts of proposed changes
make comprehensive, informed decisions
connect to your choice of 3D visualization tools (e.g., GoogleEarth, Scenario 3D, etc)

Build-Out Wizard

This tool performs a complete build-out analysis (numeric, spatial and visual) to estimate the building capacity of an area based on current zoning and land use information. The user plugs in variables such as density, minimum lot size, and land use type and the software calculates the number of buildings possible and places them on a map. A build-out analysis helps communities visualize the possibilities of many different development scenarios and provide a count of exactly how many buildings are possible by law.

Three types of build-out analyses are possible:

Numeric—calculates the total possible number of buildings based on density, building constraints and other factors.
Spatial—suggests the location of future building points using density and set-back rules.
Visual—creates a 3D model of your spatial analysis by placing 3D buildings on a draped terrain.

After running any of the three Build-Out analyses, CommunityViz automatically generates a quick and easy-to-read report with charts, summarizing the input and output data. If a spatial or visual build-out is run, a map or 3D model can also be developed with additional effort.

One application of a build-out analysis is to explore different zoning scenarios in agricultural zones. The Common Impacts analysis can be run to compare associated costs of development – infrastructure costs (roads), energy and water consumption, and ecological impacts – under different scenarios, such as rural large lot zoning versus effective agricultural zoning, that includes the ability to establish sending areas for the transfer of development rights.

What is required to run a Build-Out Analysis?

The building block of the Build-Out analysis is a municipality’s zoning codes and current parcel based land-use information. At a minimum, digital data layers in an Arcview GIS shapefile format are required for the following: parcels including current land use, zoning, roads, streams, wetlands, soils, and slopes. Additional land development regulations specifying lot size restrictions, building setbacks and floor area ratios are input into forms and an analysis is run. Using the wizards, the user has flexibility to input a community’s various restrictions on development (for example, do not build on wetlands) and CommunityViz calculates the possibilities.

The following video shows the process of running a Build-Out analysis beginning with the land use data (“Buildable Area”) and ending with the reports and charts necessary to communicate the findings to stakeholders.

Watch Demonstration Video

Common Impacts

Common Impacts automatically creates GIS-based impact analyses, commonly associated with growth and development. Users can instantly start to see some of the most commonly used indicators of economic, environmental, and social outcomes associated with alternative growth scenarios. The analyses created include formulas, indicators, charts, reports, and variable assumptions with default values to serve as a starting point.

Watch Demonstration Video

Suitability Wizard

The Suitability Wizard enables users to create a site suitability or desirability analysis based on the users’ concerns (e.g., proximity to floodplains or wetlands);

Watch Demonstration Video

TimeScope

Enables users to visualize change of the landscape over a designated time period based on the user’s rules and assumptions

Watch Demonstration Video

Scenario 3D

Scenario 3D enables users to view potential land use changes and scenarios three-dimensionally, providing a unique visual tool for communicating the potential impacts of land use decisions.

Scenario 3D has the geospatial accuracy of the ArcGIS map from which they are built. Features and objects in the 3D scene carry their GIS attribute data, so by clicking on them, you can find out more about the things you see. Hyperlinks let you launch websites, movies, or other multimedia content by clicking on objects in the scene.

Users can also use other 3D visualization tools in place of Scenario 3D, such as Google Earth or ArcScene by ESRI.

Watch Demonstration Video

Technical Requirements

Hardware Requirements

1GB of RAM, 2GH+ Processor
Storage capacity of more than 5GB
5+ GB Hard Drive Space
256+MB DirectX9 graphic
Directx9 capable graphics card with 256MG of memory

Software Requirements

CommunityViz Self-Service or CommunityViz Professional software (see comparison table that compares the two packages)
ESRI ArcMap™ (ArcView, ArcEditor, or ArcInfo) 9.2, 9.3, or 10 (free?)
Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7
Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0
DirectX 9.0c
Components
- Scenario 360™ v 3.3 - Dynamic GIS analysis software that supports land-use decision making through quantitative analysis and 2D visualization
- SiteBuilder 3D™ for ArcGIS - 3D visualization software that allows users to quickly build photo-realistic 3D scenes from 2D maps.

Case Studies

Monroe Township (Cumberland County)

In response to the interest that the Monroe Township Supervisors expressed in finding a new way of visioning the future of their community and the impacts of their land use decisions, the Central PA Conservancy created a visioning presentation that shows a “community build-out analysis” for the Conservation Zone located within Monroe Township.

View/Download Case Study

Regional Growth Management and Regional Transportation Planning (Tri-County Regional Planning Commission, Central Pennsylvania)

The Commission’s GIS staff modeled full residential build-outs, using CommunityViz, for all 103 municipalities in Cumberland, Dauphin, and Perry Counties for two different scenarios (206 total model runs). These models will be used in updating both the Regional Growth Management Plan and the Regional Transportation Plan.

View/Download Case Study

The following case studies were developed by Placeways, LLC, the developer of the software:

County Comprehensive Plan (Allegheny County, Pennsylvania) - What’s Your Favorite Place?

The pilot project is intended to help local decision-makers with research, tools, and educational materials to prioritize agricultural lands worthy of protection, and to be able to communicate the results to others.

View/Download Case Study

Planning for Agriculture (Calumet County, Wisconsin) – Planning for Agriculture

CommunityViz® was used to measure how well different future land use scenarios, or alternatives, met the Plan goals and objectives by merging public input and geographic information. The results of the CommunityViz analysis were communicated to the public through graphs, charts and other illustrations.

View/Download Case Study

Comprehensive Transportation Planning (Mooresville, North Carolina) – Knitting Together Land-Use and Transportation Decision-Making Through Scenario Planning

Recognizing the essential relationship between land use, urban form, and transportation decisions, in 2006 the Town of Mooresville initiated three major planning projects: Comprehensive Land Use Plan, a Comprehensive Transportation Plan, and an update of its Zoning Ordinance. Following a suggestion by the Federal Highway Administration, the Town decided to incorporate scenario planning to better link the three planning processes.

View/Download Case Study

Additional case studies available at placeways.com [http://placeways.com/communityviz/gallery/casestudies.php]

Conservation Tools

CommunityViz®

Experts

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