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Civic Alliance
Maps are a crucial tool for visualizing, analyzing and presenting the information essential to regional planning and policy-making. Regional Plan Association uses Geographic Information System (GIS)* for this purpose, as an advocacy tool and research enabler. RPA has been conducting GIS on a project by project basis resulting in the creation of a spatial database for the entire 31-County Metropolitan Area of New York City. Map-making and geographic analyses have been used since the First Regional Plan. GIS provides for faster and more automated methods for conducting these same geographic analyses. Below you'll find several recent examples of RPA maps. In the future, this site will house the Regional Interactive Atlas.
more Long Island Sound Stewardship Long Island Sound Stewardship
Public Hearing Maps

 Regional GIS Links
more Nature's Estuary Nature's Estuary
The New York New Jersey Harbor Maps

Maps of Five Core Habitat Complexes		 Merrit Parkway Greenway
more Brooklyn Waterfront
Greenway		    
more A Geographic Information System (GIS) is a system with computer software, hardware, data, and personnel in order to manipulate analyze and present information tied to spatial location. The data is tied to a spatial location via points, lines, or areas. The data can be point locations of planning priorities in the region. The lines can be linear priorities such as greenways or new transit lines. Areas can be parks, land uses, and zoning districts. GIS does not just have to be points, lines and polygons, images can be used as well. RPA for example, incorporates historic photos, remote sensing data, ortho-photography, aerial photos, and CADD drawings into its Geographic Database. The GIS software displays the information as layers of data. The layers are stacked on top of one another to create a map. The selection of layers needed for a project is determined by the analyst's planning needs. Most often Maps and Graphics are outputs of the GIS. Tabular data is a common result from conducting geographic analyses.