Steven Stichter

State-Level Support of Local Land Use Planning

Since 1974, the State of North Carolina has required the creation of land use and natural resource protection plans in each of the 20 counties that border ocean or estuarine waters. Since 1978, the State has provided funds and technical assistance to support the local planning process through the activities of the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission and its staff, the Division of Coastal Management (DCM).

Encouraged by internal research projects and supported by increased use of geographic information systems in other state agencies, DCM initiated the development of a GIS in 1992. Beginning in the summer of 1995, the data collection efforts to support land use planning will be put to the test--in addition to funds and continued technical support, DCM will provide a standard package of information to all jurisdictions scheduled to update their existing land use plan.

This paper will explore the issues related to selection, presentation and transfer of information to local governments. Accuracy, scale, classification and precision are critical aspects of determining which state data are appropriate for local planning. The challenge lies in achieving a balance that results in worthwhile products for the Coastal Management program and local jurisdictions.

Coastal North Carolina

Planning in Coastal North Carolina

The North Carolina Coastal Area Management Act (CAMA) established the first (and to date only) requirement for local planning in the state. Each of the 20 counties within the defined coastal zone are required to develop land use plans and update those plans at least every five years. Municipalities in the coastal zone have the option of developing their own plans or remaining under their county's plan. To aid in the development of these plans, the Division of Coastal Management provides financial assistance through planning grants and technical assistance through its planning staff. The final land use plans must comply with minimum technical and procedural standards developed by the Division and officially approved by the NC Coastal Resources Commission. As of winter 1995, all 20 counties and 71 municipalities (out of 89 total) in coastal NC have locally-adopted and DCM-approved plans for their future growth and development.

Information Support

In the past few years a number of boards and committees have called for another kind of support for coastal land use planning, namely a standard package of information to serve as a base for the planning process. This idea was first promoted in 1993 by the Coastal Resources Advisory Council, the citizen advisory board to the Coastal Resources Commission. In the fall of 1994, the Coastal Futures Committee (CFC), a blue-ribbon panel appointed by the governor to study the future of coastal management in North Carolina, reiterated this proposal. The committee's final report included the following recommendation under the heading Improving the Quality of the Planning Program:

The Division of Coastal Management should provide a standard package of background data, preferably on a GIS, to all local governments at the outset of a land use plan update. This could include information available from all relevant state and federal agencies, including population projections, economic and demographic trends, water quality information, land use, land cover, soils, wetland and hazard areas. (Coastal Futures Committee 1994)
In July 1995, DCM will respond to these calls by providing base of planning information to all jurisdictions scheduled to update their existing land use plans at that time. Six counties and nine municipalities are scheduled to begin the planning process this summer. These initial packets will contain all of the major types of information that state guidelines require to be addressed in the land use plans, with the exception of those data that reside wholly at the county or local level, such as building or septic tank permit information. A list of information categories for the standard information packets is given below.

Information Base for Land Use Planning

A solid information base is of critical importance to planning. It provides the context and substance for discussions of problems and issues facing a community or county. This information base is composed of both the formal maps, databases and statistics which describe a planning jurisdiction and the more informal knowledge and conceptions brought to the process by the participants. For the formal information to be useful, it must be accepted by all participants as accurate and appropriate (Gruber 1994). Where all participants agree that a given problem and an agreeable solution exist, extra documentation of the issue may be superfluous. In instances where controversy remains, however, agreement on a common description of the problem can greatly facilitate discussions about the severity of the problem and help to focus more quickly on viable solutions. Much of the work of this project will focus on ensuring that the information that is collected and provided will be useful and acceptable to the participants in land use planning in Coastal North Carolina. These participants range from the governments that must ultimately adopt the plan and the consultants who typically prepare them to the citizens, land owners and land developers who are most directly affected by the final plan.

Another role for the formal planning information is to make accessible expert knowledge that is critical to understanding and resolving a local problem but otherwise unavailable locally. For example, few jurisdictions have staff expertise in the areas of surface water quality or delimiting animal habitats. Data sets developed by other researchers may offer sufficient guidance on these issues during plan development. Assessments of water quality condition conducted bi-annually by the North Carolina Division of Environmental Management, for instance, summarize a great deal of information on surface water quality, including identification of degraded waters, probable sources of degradation, and waters with high resource or habitat values.

State Government as Information Source

There are many factors which support the provision of state-level information to local jurisdictions for use in land use planning, but the objective of each is the same: a more effective land use planning process and better plans. A ready source of information available at the outset of the land use planning process will enable more substantive discussions from the very first public meeting. For the majority of coastal jurisdictions that do not have map generation capabilities, the maps provided with these packets may be a resource that has not been available during the development of previous plans. These common sources of information can potentially facilitate discussions of shared problems between neighboring jurisdictions. As the provider of information, DCM can also combine and extend primary information to identify relationships between or implications of changes within an area. For example, impact coefficients may be applied to population growth projections to estimate the impact of new residents on local water consumption or wastewater treatment.

A number of developments make this project possible at this time. The first is the rapidly increasing number and breadth of digital information sources (both GIS-based and otherwise) developed and shared by state agencies. The State of North Carolina, through its Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (CGIA) has assembled an impressive array of map base information and natural resource inventories. Major funding for the development of comprehensive regional datasets came in the late 1980's with the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuarine Study, co-funded by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the State of North Carolina under EPA's National Estuary Program. Many of these regional GIS layers have since been extended state-wide, resulting in creation of the state's Corporate GIS Database. In 1994, North Carolina adopted a strategic plan for geographic information, which defines funding and custodial roles for the individual components of the corporate database to ensure the continued maintenance and currency of its components.

These data comprise the bulk of information to be distributed for land use planning support; only a few critical, but presently unavailable, components must be created by DCM. Within DCM, recently expanded GIS capabilities (hardware, software and expertise) make this project both technically and financially feasible. These capabilities were developed to support other DCM initiatives that rely upon the GIS. A wetlands mapping and functional assessment project and a watershed database of demographic and natural resource information are two GIS-based projects, the results of which will be incorporated into the land use planning information packets.

Secondary benefits to this project accrue at the state level. By enabling the use of a broader variety of geographic data and encouraging the sharing of data, the probability increases that higher quality and finer detail local databases will be made available to DCM as they are created. Municipally- or county-maintained building and septic tank permit records, for example, could be of great assistance to DCM in both its land use planning and development permitting functions. Widespread use of geographic data developed by state agencies should expand the already significant sharing of information between state agencies, broaden the support for further GIS development within NC state government and help identify and resolve gaps and errors within the state GIS database. Finally, to complete and distribute the first set of information packets in time for the approaching summer deadline, DCM will necessarily become a more efficient provider of general information about coastal North Carolina, especially for GIS-generated information and map products.

Limits of State-level Information

Contrasting the many advantages to the state serving as a primary source for land use planning information are some significant existing limitations to that role. These include accuracy, scale and completeness limitations to the state GIS database; the practical necessity of delivering, this year, a standard, 'one size fits all' package; development and implementation costs to DCM; and the difficulty in providing information across the broad spectrum of technical capabilities among coastal planning jurisdictions. Preliminary reviews indicate, however, that the advantages gained by local governments by easy access to a broader variety of information will outweigh the costs of data assembly, formatting and redistribution, even accounting for the use limits associated with those data.

Database Concerns

Because the majority of the data which comprise the state's corporate database were developed by state agencies to support regional studies and mapping, the source scale for much of this data is 1:100,000 (1":8,333'). This scale corresponds to standard scales for regional planning, which range between 1":1,000' and 1":10,000'; typical scales for local planning, however, fall between 1":400' and 1":2,000' (American Society of Civil Engineers 1983). Although 1:100,000 scale data are too coarse for parcel-specific planning and review, they are adequate to demonstrate the distribution and extent of factors critical to coastal land use planning. Such indicator information may have previously been unavailable or sufficiently cumbersome to use so as to render them inaccessible to the planning process.

Data in the state's corporate database were collected by many different agencies with diverse quality control standards. Differing feature definitions, methods of data capture and capture dates all affect the compatibility and reliability of the GIS database components. Many of these accuracy concerns will be resolved as GIS layers come into everyday use and information is updated with greater frequency. Within the context of the transfer of information to local governments, metadata (source scale, agency and date) will be provided for each piece of information to enable data users to determine which elements are appropriate for their uses.

Finally, a number of components which are high on local government wish lists, such as wetlands information and floodplain and jurisdictional boundaries, are presently missing from the state's corporate database. In some cases, a comprehensive data source does not exist. This is true of wetlands and DCM, as noted above, is developing wetland maps for coastal North Carolina to fill this gap. For other information, such as floodplain boundaries and water quality use support ratings, the challenge lies in getting existing information into digital map form.

Packet Development Costs

The development of land use planning information packets and the transfer of this information to local governments is not without cost to DCM and to local governments. Costs associated with the packet development include GIS hardware and software purchase and maintenance; data acquisition; staff time to assemble and reformat information and compose maps; and printing and copying supplies.

For this year's project, many of the costs listed above are covered by a one-year federal grant or under other ongoing projects. Although substantial emphasis is placed on developing methods and procedures which will reduce the amount of effort required for updates, significant costs will remain in future years. Excess in-house GIS capacity which existed this year will most likely be absorbed by expanding GIS use within the Division. Staffing support, provided this year through the one-year grant, must come from DCM in the future and the Governor has proposed an extra position to support coastal land use planning in this year's state budget. Future data acquisition needs will become clearer with final assembly and distribution of this year's information packets, although the majority of these needs will potentially continue to be met primarily through information developed by the appropriate agency or jurisdiction. To encourage continued cooperation, DCM will have to play a larger role in the expansion of the state GIS database through development of new data layers of use to other agencies and users.

Packet Use Costs

Successful transfer of information to the local level depends upon substantial work on the receiving end, in addition to the effort expended in developing the basic packages. The geographic information used for this project is complex; interaction between data layers on a map increase this complexity. Training on the uses and limits of the information for both DCM and local government staff will be critical to productive and appropriate application of this information to the land use planning process. Guidance documents which link these new data sources with existing and familiar sources and with the pertinent sections of the land use planning guidelines will facilitate information adoption and use.

Packet Distribution Costs

Once packet development is complete, the practical issue of information dissemination and distribution remains. For those jurisdictions without any GIS capabilities this is straightforward--paper maps of the geographic data will be distributed along with paper and electronic versions of all tabular and text materials. Spreadsheet and word-processing formats must be attended to, but the small number of standard products and the increasing ability of these programs to read foreign formats eases this problem. For distribution of GIS data, the technical issues are much more difficult. The variety of potential hardware platforms, GIS software, and tape and disk media exponentially increases transfer difficulties. The number of jurisdictions with GIS capabilities is presently limited (10 coastal counties and 9 municipalities have some type of GIS), but the role of technical transfer issues is sure to grow with the number of geographic information systems in local governments in the coastal area.

Conclusions

There are clear interests, benefits and uses for higher quality and a broader variety of information to support local land use planning in coastal North Carolina. For many types of data, especially GIS data, DCM is a logical source for local planning jurisdictions. Although there are costs associated with data assembly and redistribution, these will be overridden by benefits to the planning process, such as greater understanding of land and environmental conflicts and interactions, expanded cooperation between neighboring jurisdictions and enhanced public awareness and participation. Close cooperation between state agencies in data development and sharing, especially with GIS data, made this project possible, which is a promising development. How these packets actually affect the planning process will become apparent, however, only after the first year of their distribution and use.

Acknowledgements

Funding for this work was provided by the Office of Ocean and Coastal Resources Management, NOAA, US Dept of Commerce, under the Project of Special Merit grant program. I would like to thank Trish McGuire for her insight and assistance with development and fulfillment of this project.

References

American Society of Civil Engineers, Committee on Cartographic Surveying (1983). Map Uses, Scales, and Accuracies for Engineering and Associated Purposes, New York.

Gruber, Judith, 1994. Coordinating Growth Management through Consensus-Building. University of California, Berkeley: Institute of Urban and Regional Development.

North Carolina Coastal Futures Commission, 1994. Charting a Course for Our Coast: A Report to the Governor. State of North Carolina, Department of Environment, Health and Natural Resources.

Steven Stichter
Environmental Planner
North Carolina Division of Coastal Management
PO Box 27687
Raleigh NC 27611
Tel: 919 733 2293
Fax: 919 733 1495
stichter@cama.ehnr.state.nc.us