Planning Perspective

One thing I found interesting on the ESRI website is the land use planning section. I'm very in to planning out land for development and looking over legal constraints. I like to see what a developer can and can't do based on endangered species, wetlands and zoning. The website offers maps of various land uses across the U.S. along with case studies. GIS is a big tool in land use management. It is useful in that you can locate and view a site without having to drive to it day in and day out. GIS also offers zoning as a layer and other environmental issues such as flood plains, as another. I've always liked mapping sites and applying layers to them. The ESRI case studies let me see what other people are doing hundreds of miles away, so I can compare my approach and work to theirs. It's another useful tool that I can now go to if need be.

Critique on Social Explorer

The social explorer website is very informative regarding demographics in the United States. Although it has a very plain home page, once you start looking at all the census maps, it gets more interesting. I found it cool that there is a carbon emissions map. I am an environmental science major and have written a paper on carbon emissions. It's right up my alley. There are also maps for religion, which are useful to community planners, in case there is a need for a church. They can see what type of church would best suit the area that they are planning. The website is just good in general to see how advanced population has become in size over hundreds of years. It is really neat that the maps date back to the 1700's. The most recent map added is the location of Haitians in the U.S. after the earthquake. This is good in order to see just where they have been relocated to. The website is useful for students, teachers, planners and the government.