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Methodology

 

OBJECTIVE: The goal of the project was to gather data on land use in Langley Township and to determine the prime areas for urbanization.  Certain criteria were then developed on which to base a study that involved use of the Idrisi software package to create a spatial analysis of the area .  After coming up with a possible degree of urbanization for the present the study was compared to the Official Community Plan (OCP) to see how my analysis compared with the long term visions of Langley Township's distinguished planning department.  Possible reasons for any deviations were then discussed.

CRITERIA:                                                                                                                  

1.     Protected areas surrounding waterways                                            

        1.1.   Ideally, buffers of 15m would have been created around all of the waterways to show which areas could not be developed due to environmental protection.  Unfortunately, since the resolution of the grid cells was close to 100m it was impossible to build an effective buffer.  By using the streams themselves as a constraint, a buffer was, in effect, used automatically since the size of the grid cells used to represent the stream represented extra area on either size of the stream.

       1 .2.   Waterways were made a Boolean constraint where urbanization was not permitted within the buffered area.

 
 

 

 

                       

2.      Protected areas in the Agricultural 

Land Reserve (ALR)

2.1.            Areas included in the ALR were ruled out

completely since they are not available for major

development.

2.2.            The ALR was made a Boolean constraint where

urbanization was not permitted within the ALR Boundary.

 
 

 

 

 

  3. Areas already designated as high density residential, commercial, or industrial

       3.1.   Areas that are already well developed will not be used for construction of high density communities.  Residential areas that feature large lots with single residences may be developed since the lots may be sold and developed (ex. Willoughby).

       3.2. Areas that are already well developed were made a Boolean constraint where urbanization was not permitted within the developed areas.

                                                                                           

      4.      Proximity to developed areas

       4.1.   Residential construction was considered to be likely close to areas that were already developed and thus already had services in place (ex. Shopping, activities, etc;)

       4.2. Proximity to developed areas was weighted and used in the MCE WLC analysis.

   

       This layer was created by reclassifying the landuse layer into a boolean map where high density residential, commercial, industrial, transportation, communication, utility, civic, institutional, and recreational.  

 
 
     

 

 

 

5.      Accessibility to roads

5.1.   Proximity to major and minor roads

were weighted and used in the Multi

Criteria Evaluation (MCE) Weighted Linear 

Combination (WLC) analysis.  

5.2. The layer shown was further broken

into major and minor roads prior to the WLC

analysis.  Details on this can be seen in the 

Cartographic Model.

   

The layer shown was created by reclassifying

the roads according to make every road

category into one object.

 
 
 


 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

    6. Proximity to schools

       6.1.   This factor is only somewhat important.  Once a community starts to be developed schools are usually built to accommodate the new    population.  The area then grows rapidly as families choose to buy close to a school.  New schools are also a population draw.  This is true of primary, secondary, and post-secondary institutions.

       6.2. Proximity to schools was weighted and used in the MCE WLC analysis.

      

       The layer shown was created by querying the parcels table in ArcView for parcels of actual use code 650 (schools) and deleting all othe the other records.  Once imported into Idrisi, the layer was reclassed into a Boolean layer showing only the locations of schools within Langley Township..