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Resilience Insights

Land Use Types FAQs

Frequently asked questions about land use types.

How can I make changes to a type that's already in use?

Building and Place Types that are in use in a Base Canvas or a scenario are “locked” and cannot be edited. You can, however, make a copy of a type to edit its composition (for example, adjusting the Component proportions within a Building Type, or the Building Type and right-of-way proportions within a Place Type) to change its characteristics.

To create a new type on the basis of an existing type, select the existing type in the Building Types or Place Types screen of the Land Use Type Manager (accessed via Manage mode), click Save as to create a copy, and proceed with editing the type information, description, and composition. See Use the Land Use Type Manager for more details on specifying types and the Components of which they are composed.

You can replace instances of the “old” type in your scenarios by filtering for them in your scenario canvas. Add a filter for the Land Use Type (L4) column and select the old type. Narrow your selection to features that have already been painted by adding a filter for the Painted column. Then, paint the selected features with the new version of the type. See Build a Land Use Scenario for more details on painting.

Can I copy types from one project to another?

Yes, custom types can be copied from one project to another. Please contact Analyst support for assistance.

Can I extract a table of my Components, Building Types, and Place Types?

Yes, we can generate a table of land use types for you. Please contact Analyst support for assistance.

Should I be using Building Types or Place Types?

The primary difference between Building Types and Place Types is that Place Types include specifications for right-of-way areas. By default, parcel-resolution Base Canvases use Building Types, while block-resolution canvases use Place Types. As you create scenarios, though, you can be more flexible in using Building or Place Types to accommodate your needs in representing new development.

For example, you could use a custom Place Type to depict development on a large parcel or group of parcels representing a major redevelopment site. In this manner, you could specify a specific mix of Building Types, along with internal right-of-way areas, to represent planned development or roughly projected capacity for housing and employment.

You could also formulate a Place Type to specify a mix of Building Types without including right-of-way areas. This could be useful for painting development on a number of parcels for which you don’t want to be very specific in painting individual Building Types on a parcel-by-parcel basis. For example, you could paint parcels within a transit-oriented development (TOD) area, along a corridor, or for areas that share the same zoning codes to reflect a projected mix of development. In these cases, you would be allocating development to meet average densities and Floor area ratio (FAR) characteristics. As such, development at the individual parcel scale would be generalized. For the purposes of gauging development capacity, using Place Types might be appropriate. Depending on the scale of your project and the areas to which you are allocating development, using Place Types to represent development over groups of parcels, rather than individual Building Types painted at a finer grain, may or may not have a significant bearing on analysis module results.