Plans

In ArcGIS Urban, a plan refers to long-range urban planning at the scale of a study area encompassing several lots. Plans are designed to meet a city's estimated targets, such as population growth and density, and consist of a local zoning or land-use code formatted as a common data model. This generates a 3D representation of the zoning parameters in the form of a maximum envelope and building form. You can use the geometries to support scenario planning down to the parcel level.

ArcGIS Urban supports two types of plans: land use and zoning. See the Land-use plans and Zoning plans sections below to learn more.

Users with the appropriate licensing and permissions can view, create, configure, and edit plans. See Create a plan, Configure a plan, and Edit a plan for details.

In the overview, a plan is represented by a square icon and can be discovered using the search function or by clicking it in the view. The color of the icon is either orange for zoning plans or green for land-use plans.

Land-use plans

Land-use plans allow for scenario-based planning of future land use with target space-use distribution. The focus of land-use plans is on potential developments rather than on proposed developments, as opposed to zoning plans. You can calculate the maximum potential values for your plan's metrics based on the target space-use distribution. See Manage land-use types and Land-use potential for details.

Use land-use plans for the following use cases:

• To coordinate the growth and future development of a community.
• To update a comprehensive plan as the basis for future zoning regulations.

Zoning plans

Zoning plans allow for scenario-based planning of future zoning regulations and developments with space use. You can calculate metric values to quantify and compare the individual plan scenarios based on the space use of proposed developments. See Work with the dashboard for details. Urban also allows you to validate a zoning plan scenario against existing or future land use. See Validate zoning using land use for details.

Use zoning plans for the following use cases:

• To design future zoning regulation scenarios.
• To validate proposed zoning changes against existing or future land use.
• To design future buildings, and to quantify and compare development scenarios based on space-use dependent metric value calculations.