new jersey geographer

When you look at the maps produced for the NJ State Plans, you can see a not-so-surprising trend.

State Plan maps spanning 70 years.

Encourage development in and around our cities. Preserve areas of environmental importance, such as the Highlands and Pinelands. Plan accordingly for agriculture.

I’m always surprised when environmentalists and developers claim that a proposed plan or regulation will have severe ramifications one way or another. The current course on which we are traveling has been set a long time ago. We still march towards statewide build out, while simultaneously preserving thousands of acres of farmland and open space.

That being said, we still need to plan to ensure that on a micro level to ensure that development is encouraged where appropriate and that the environs protected or reserved for later growth. The 2009 New Jersey State Plan is currently available from the Office of Smart Growth’s web page for informational purposes only. The public comment period will likely begin in June. However, you don’t have to wait until June to take a look at the draft final plan and map. I’ve also made the draft final map available on NJ State Atlas.

Currently on Rowan’s homepage is an article on the Geography Department’s work on bring GIS to the greater university community. The article focuses on our recent web mapping work; specifically the Land Use Change viewer and NJ State Atlas.  I’m quoted several times in the article, so I’m excited about that.

Direct link to the full article: http://www.rowan.edu/today/news/index/FS/118

The Highlands Land Use Capability Zone Map has been added to the Smart Growth Locator on NJ State Atlas. This update also incorporates the changes to the State Plan map from the end of December 2008.

This is a minor update; in the near future, all of the pages will receive a minor layout update that should fix some of the rendering issues in IE and improve the overall usability of the site. There are a few mapping projects in the pipeline that will be released soon.

If you know of any geospatial data in New Jersey that could be incorporated into NJ State Atlas, please let me know!

I just recently updated NJ State Atlas with a USGS Topo Map mashup. It’s a pretty simple, straightforward application. I’m pretty pleased with it, as it’s part of a larger upgrade on the site: now, the State Plan Map, Land Use Change Map, and the Topo Mashup are all served up using TileCache. The maps should now load much more quickly, as it’s no longer rendering the map from the GIS data every time.

The Traffic Map now has “live” incidents from NJ DOT, as well as the 100+ traffic cameras throughout the State. I also migrated all of the map pages to the new look.

Check back often, as I am always making updates. Also, let me know if you think I should create a map, or make some improvements to one of the existing maps. I’m always open to suggestions.