Land Use Planning

Land use planning (current planning, urban planning, regional planning) deals with the issues related to the appropriate uses of land ensuring that the land is used efficiently for the benefit of the wider economy and population. An important part of social policy, land use planning addresses the selection of physical layout, scale of development, aesthetics, costs of alternatives, impact upon landscape and species and often includes renewal, zoning and transport infrastructure as well as implications to the environment.

Because of the many disciplines and knowledge domains involved in land use planning, planners are looking to technology like Limehouse Software’s uCreate and uEngage products to streamline the production of the vast number of statutory policies and strategies and in engaging citizens in the community, including:

• Comprehensive Plan: developed to address the constant change and evolution of a community and dictates public policy in terms of transportation, utilities, land use, recreation, and housing. Comprehensive plans typically encompass large geographical areas, a broad range of topics, and cover a long-term time horizon.
• Neighborhood Plans: deals with a level of planning greater than household size but smaller than that of a city with the goal of empowering local residents to take responsibility for their area or neighborhood.
  
• Community Revitalization: addresses the revitalization or regeneration of an area or community.

Limehouse Software’s uCreate provides the virtual environment that supports team collaboration for the development of the various complex documents required in land use planning. The web-based integrated document-centric collaboration and publishing solution provides customizable shared workspaces and one-click publishing to multiple channels (including print-ready PDF, HTML and XML).

The uEngage portal provides centralized management of the entire consultation lifecycle process enabling planning departments to consult all relevant stakeholders and citizens through the widest variety of response mechanisms including:

• Polls
• Surveys
• Questionnaires
• Forums
• Discussion boards
• Interactive documents
• Video

In addition, the uEngage portal becomes the single repository for all citizen comments regardless of how or where they were submitted. All comments and results are stored in a single database for analysis and reporting.