Background

From the Office of Smart Growth:

The State Plan provides a vision for the future that will preserve and enhance the quality of life for all residents of New Jersey. The State Plan is the result of a cross-acceptance process that included thousands of New Jersey citizens in hundreds of public forums, discussing all of the major aspects of the plan – its goals, strategies, policies and application. This process ensures that the plan belongs to the citizens of New Jersey, whose hopes and visions have shaped it.

The map that accompanies the State Plan is the State Plan Policy Map. Since 2007, New Jersey State Atlas has hosted an interactive version of the State Plan Policy Map, allowing the public easy access to the Map, as well as providing a simple way to perform a Smart Growth Area lookup.

The State Plan Policy Map was the first map created for New Jersey State Atlas. It is the primary reason this site exists today. I previously worked for the Office of Smart Growth, from 2007 to 2009 and took it upon myself to explore open source (i.e. low cost, as there was little to no budget) options for hosting an interactive, web-based version of the State Plan Policy Map. Though I learned a great amount about open source web mapping, the greatest benefit has been that this web map has made the New Jersey State Plan much more accessible to all interested parties.

State Plan Map Data

The New Jersey State Plan Policy Map is rather complex and is offered up on OSG’s GIS data download page in 9 separate ESRI shapefiles. Of the 9, three are essential when dealing with policy, regulation and “smart growth” designation.

  • Planning Areas
    The Planning Areas define distinct regions where either growth should be focused or restricted. The regions are stratified into varying levels of density or environmental protection. The Planning Areas form the essential foundation of the State Plan Policy Map.
  • Designated Centers
    Upon completing the Plan Endorsement process, an area within a municipality (or municipalities, if submitting a joint or regional endorsement) may be designated a Center. These Centers allow for greater density in regulated regions of the State, such as the CAFRA region.
  • Critical Environmental Sites (CES)
    CESs are overlays on top of the Planning Areas that denote areas of environmental sensitivity less than one square mile in size. They are only placed within the Metropolitan, Suburban, Fringe and Rural Planning Areas.

Technical Details

The State Plan interactive web map is powered using several open source packages. The actual GIS data from OSG is rendered using MapServer, a former University of Minnesota project, now an OSGeo project. MapServer renders individual tiles, at specified zoom levels, using the Web Mercator projection. These tiles are then cached using an aptly named Python application called TileCache. The map is powered using the Google Maps API. GMaps API is the only non-open source component of the map, mainly because OpenLayers does not support sandwiching the MapServer tiles between Google’s aerial imagery and the roads/annotation layer. I felt that having the annotation covered by translucent polygons was unacceptable; many other mashups with custom tiles do not care to properly layer the tiles the make up the map. I feel that the clarity this provides helps set my maps apart. (“It’s the little things…”)

I also wrote some custom Javascript to perform a WMS request for attribute info, allowing Smart Growth Area lookups to be performed using this map. While working at OSG, I was told that several people had used my web map as the Smart Growth Locator, instead of the official locator hosted with NJ HMFA.

Updates

While I no longer work for OSG, I still keep the State Plan interactive map up to date. I’ve also updated the map to include other State Plan-related mapping, such as highlighting the change between the current plan and the next revision of the map.

Feel free to comment with any ideas, suggestions or concerns below.