Land Use Planning

Introduction:

Land use planning involves determining the most (and least) appropriate locations for certain land uses.  This is generally done by considering each characteristic of an area separately - drainage, construction material, distance of travel, natural hazards, land ownership... 

• For each characteristic a map is generated (originally done with ink on Mylar - clear plastic), representing the relative fitness or unfitness of development.  
• Often the maps are shaded to represent the range of constraint - none, low, moderate, high, extreme...  
• Finally, the maps are overlain on each other and a base map to generate a composite suitability map.

Assignment:

Your company - Environmental Sciences, Inc. - has been awarded the contract to evaluate the Henry's Lake area of northeasternmost Idaho for construction of a new, destination, four-season resort, to compete with Big Sky, Montana.  You must determine the optimum locations in the area for residential, commercial, recreational, and infrastructure development.  You must consider both the hazards (flooding, landslides, faulting...) and the resources (snow, water, sand and gravel...) of the area.  The information available to you is included in the USGS maps of the area:

You must split your corporate team into design teams for:

1. A ski area (alpine and Nordic) and related facilities (parking, base lodge...) and other recreation,
2. Residential areas, including hotel, condominiums, homes, and infrastructure (roads, utilities...),
3. A commercial center, including stores, restaurants, police and fire, and their infrastructure,
4. A transportation system (road and air) including major and minor roads and sources of material, and
5. A service infrastructure, including sewage disposal and mains, waste disposal, water source and mains.

Each design team will use the maps available to them to constrain the locations of their designated facilities by shading (lightly) an overlay map.  We will convene at the end to discuss the overall implications for the development.

Procedure:

1. Spend about ten minutes discussing with the members of your design team the constraints and resources needed for your part of the project.  Write them down!
2. Orient your overlay on one of the data maps and mark the four map corners.   This will allow you to correctly align other maps and to produce the corporate product.  Print each team member's name on the overlay, outside of the map area.
3. Outline areas designated as appropriate, and leave then uncolored.
4. Outline areas considered to be constrained, and tint them red (prohibited), blue (marginal), or green (possible).  Because you have several different maps, you might want to use different symbols to indicate different constraints - horizontal, vertical, diagonal left, diagonal right, dot... or different tints.  Make a key on your overlay explaining your symbology.
5. Do the same for the other maps.
6. Prepare a summary statement explaining why you made the choices you did.

Assemble as a corporate team and make a final map, using each of your overlays, designating the approximate locations of all of the critical facilities and the infrastructure connecting them.  We will discuss the process and the outcome.   Pass in your completed product.

We will consider this project to be the equivalent of a lab final, with more rigorous grading than on most other labs.  Show us what you can do!