GIS Buildout Analysis and Urban Planning

A buildout analysis is an important methodology in land-use planning. The GIS technicalities of doing a buildout analysis tend to be the purview of professionals with a background in geographical sciences. However, it is argued that planners ought to be able to conduct buildout analysis in order to develop a better understanding of how land-use patterns could change sustainably over time depending on a community’s regulatory environment and pace of development. A state buildout analysis is compared and contrasted with buildouts conducted for two local jurisdictions on the opposite ends of Massachusetts: the towns of Amherst and Georgetown. The town of Amherst’s computations identified lower values of developable and new commercial/industrial land and 1,878 more new dwelling units than the state-led planning initiative three years earlier. In the case of Georgetown, the UMass Amherst planning consultancy identified lower values of developable land and fewer new dwelling units and 3.5 million square feet more of new commercial/industrial land than the state-led analysis. A series of implications for teaching buildout analysis in Urban and Regional Planning studio courses is presented.