#mapping tools

[martingarry-195]

How GIS Helps in Land Use and Zoning Analysis for Better City Planning

Urban growth is accelerating, but planning for it often lags behind. One of the most common challenges faced by urban planners today is the lack of clarity on how land is being used—and misused—across city zones. Misaligned zoning laws, unchecked development, and overlapping land allocations can lead to traffic congestion, resource waste, and environmental degradation. So, how do cities solve this? This is where Geographic Information Systems step in, offering a smarter, data-driven approach to land use and zoning analysis.

Why GIS is at the Heart of Smart Zoning

GIS acts like a visual brain behind city planning. It helps planners map, layer, and analyze different types of land use—residential, commercial, agricultural, industrial—and determine how they interact. With GIS, zoning isn’t just a regulatory function; it becomes a living, evolving model that responds to physical  changes.

One powerful way GIS supports this is through border intersection analysis. Imagine overlapping a city’s zoning map with its current land use dataset. You’ll instantly see where mismatches occur—for example, where industrial zones are creeping into residential neighborhoods, or where green spaces are disappearing due to unauthorized development. This makes it easier for planners to adjust policies, prioritize inspections, or even redesign city layouts more sustainably.

Who’s Using GIS for Land Analysis?

GIS isn’t limited to city governments. Industries like real estate, environmental consultancies, logistics, and even public health are tapping into spatial analysis to inform better decisions. A logistics company might use GIS to ensure their warehouse is placed within an industrial zone near main roads. Meanwhile, real estate developers check zoning layers before making large investments to avoid compliance issues down the line.

The Role of Platforms in Action

Platforms that support GIS storytelling and visual analysis—like MAPOG—offer an intuitive way to interact with spatial data. These tools allow users to upload zoning and land use files, perform border overlap analysis, and share the outcomes with decision-makers in a visual format. You don’t need to be a tech wizard to use them—just a few clicks, and the patterns reveal themselves.

If you’re exploring spatial zoning analysis for your city, community, or business, it’s worth trying out such platforms. They make the process more collaborative and less abstract—no more staring at spreadsheets when you can work with interactive maps instead.

Final Thoughts

Land use and zoning analysis isn’t just about keeping order—it’s about building better cities for people, for nature, and for the future. GIS enables urban planning to be grounded in facts, not just assumptions. And with access to visual mapping platforms, anyone—from planners to citizens—can become part of the city-building conversation.

[dailyreportonline]

Don't Get Lost: How to Add Your Home to Google Maps

Google Maps is an essential tool for navigating the world, and having your home address readily available can save you tons of time and frustration. But how do you add your home to Google Maps? There are two ways to do this, depending on whether you want it for simple navigation or for it to be a searchable location. Saving Your Home for Easy Navigation: This is the simplest method and creates a…

[melorasmushrooms]

I totally get that there’s an expectation that Brennan Lee Mulligan DMing for you would include the whole package of everything the production team of D20 has to offer but if I’m being perfectly honest, if that man said “sure! I’ll DM something for you” and rolled up with dry erase map boards and mancala beads, I’m LOCKED IN and asking if he has a preferred almond flavor

[plagueislost]

trying new coloring methods. 0/10 do NOT recommend, but hey at least i got something kinda okay out of it

[moggettt]

Anonymous asked: FOR art requests, if you're still taking: Wyll from BG3?

Red gladiolus: moral integrity, strength of character, honor, and sincerity 🗡️

Thank you so much for sending in a request!! <3

[johnnyshrine]

★ 158 // “Elsewhere”

[2minutetabletop]

What is MapMe? The Portable Map-Making Tool for Your iPad

Want to make maps on your iPad? Today I want to share a new a tool that makes it easy: MapMe!

→ You can check it out here!

Tell me, what other map-making tools should I check out?

[hatredmadeofgold]

I cannot stop drawing Raiden with iridescent hair and I am not sorry

Birthday gift for my lovely girlfriend @e6as95 💕

[dragonkid11]

The Lancer Map Creation Tool by Interpoint Station is a program that lets you create complex yet readable battlefields in minutes, featuring a random generator to generate a map in seconds as well as assets integration to create your own terrain asset and biome.

[taritoons]

Heraldic map of the Netherlands or kitty spaghetti. And check out my new shop: https://taritoons.gumroad.com/, pleeeeaaaase 🥺

[bleue-flora]

Wait… where is the sword….who the heck has WARDENS WILL (Sam’s Sword)?!… you’re telling me, I found two SAM NOOKS IRON WILLs but not his torture sword wtf!… guess I need to add it to the scavenger hunt…

Oh we are also missing Wardens Trident…. and I guess… I haven’t seen his armor set either actually…

[setup-wizard]

hoho! art thou making battle maps? fantasy world cartography, perchance?

forgotten adventures has +120 000 high resolution assets [11 GB] available to download for free on their website!

frequent user of dungeon draft? they have +30 000 free objects available on their starter pack as well!

[tgslar]

Playing By The Rules - Part 5!

Check out the map here!

[hyaacinths]

"I am you, and you are me. We are two halves."

based off rosina wachtmeisters piece here

[system-of-a-feather]

Alternative System Mind Mapping Method for Communication

[DISCLAIMER: This is not a professional or scientifically or anything really backed method, this is something coming solely from peer / personal experience.]

In regards to an anon ask earlier, I was thinking about it and one of the ways we've approached improving communication - particularly internal - in a way that is a lot less prone to flooding or dealing with trauma or anything too overwhelming - is by approaching it following the concept of Memory Webs

I haven't read up on them recently, but "Memory Webs" were a thing that our AP Psychology teacher in highschool made us do because the AP Psych test was term / jargon heavy. Memory in the human brain has been shown to be HEAVILY associative and the ability to remember and connect things tends to rely on following a "web" of connected topics, ideas, concepts etc from one idea to the next.

So in our AP Psych class, she gave us these GIANT books for Vocabulary Webs that we had to slowly work on, each of which required 6 other vocab words / related concepts, a summarized definition, and an image to represent it. By doing this, you added 6 cues to recall the word (increasing the chance you'd remember it), a visual cue, an episodic memory of working on it, and a definition - all in all improving how connected the word is to other concepts in your brain and making it easier to recall it.

I personally like to look at DID and our parts in a similar manner sometimes where the large issue is that a lot of the nodes in the web of associations are either disconnected or connected through a hard-to-find and/or small chain. In that sense, parts struggle to be held together because they are not associated concepts. It's hard to reach other parts because the dissociative walls (which in our unsubstantiated opinion is less a 'wall' and more so a lack of reinforced neural connections, so I would call them dissociative caverns) keep associations from forming

As a result, alternative to more traditional ways of mapping your system and parts, a method I've liked to internally visualize systems and navigating system dynamics is through a memory web manner. (I actually have never done it physically cause the Ray part of my brain - also the most prominent part writing this rn - rarely liked to front if he didn't have to and did a lot of stuff internally)

Here's a bit of a breakdown using six of our parts if any of you want to try it out.

We personally like it because it strips a lot of trauma and stress off of it and makes it a lot more of a positive and present engaging activity. For the purposes of this, I'll be using the free online app of Milanote cause we've used it before for OC associative webs and I think it'll do fine enough. (Honestly it actually might just be a good way to log alter information now that I'm looking at it if you are at a place in recovery where keeping track of that physically helpful)

So we can start by dropping down the parts we want to include in the form of boards

So from here, we have a bunch of disconnected parts. However, we find that a lot of these parts have things that mean a lot to them, that illicit a strong emotion or reaction from them.

Some parts may lack it more than others (often in our case trauma holders and/or trauma locked parts) and that's okay and to be expected. This is a visualization method and if there isn't much connecting a part that is 100% okay.

For demonstration sake, I will now add bubbles around each part of things that were pretty early apparent that each individual liked.

Also for the purposes of how I know our system works and how I plan to do this, I am actually moving Riku to the center and you will all see why Riku is such an S tier center point with this model

So you can see some connections forming.

Some key things you can take from this visual that also applied to earlier stags of how we connected

Lucille and Riku are and have always been pretty darn connected, they go back as one of the longest duos and were split almost as a pair to deal with academics

Chunn and Ray have a very shared interest of "I don't want to do anything leave me alone"

XIV literally was just a piece of shit early on and didn't have any immediate HARD connections with anyone largely because he never was interested in actually engaging in things he liked in a positive way as his "favorite emotion" at the time was "being pissed off"

Lin - an originally trauma stuck / loop - is very very poorly associated with anything that isn't overtly trauma related (and that is saying something cause Vocaloid is trauma related) and thus has very few connections to other parts

So looking at this though, there are a few things that have some similarities between parts. What you can do is make plans to try to foster the interests that you do have and try to generalize it a bit more to also encompass what interests other parts have. So lets engage in hobbies a little more - explore a few concepts that mean a lot to parts independently - and find some more generalized version of those hobbies

(forgot to add easy listening to Ray's and "only wearing monochrome*" to XIV's earlier) (*there are a lot of nuances and caveats)

Damn, look at that. It's messy and ugly to have in a 2D form. I absolutely hate it, this would be so impossible with our whole system. But HEY, it's very connected - and that's the goal.

Compared to the previous one, you can see how easily it can be for one part's interests to start to drift into another. Because they are largely and strongly associated features to each part, they are a lot more accessible when engaging in their shared / associated connections and interests which makes it easier for the them to stay together near the front, stay associated with one another, and work with and communicate with one another.

Of course anyone following this blog goes "Where tf is Birds" and that I left out because it would ruin the point of the web as it actually is one of our traditional "you are around the system a lot? okay pick a bird" which serves to 1) be a fun system culture thing 2) be a means of welcoming a part in and 3) helps establish a foundational connection; we do the same with music but with music its a lot more elaborate and I probably wont explain it for other reasons.

But overtime, by fostering interests that were already present and encouraging parts to broaden and generalize their specific interest a bit, you end up with a lot of overlapping associations that can greatly improve internal communication, co-fronting ability, and just general fluidity and easy of moving around the brain web.

It becomes a good way of trying to figure out what you can do to encourage and help build connections and associations between parts by seeing where things are similar / could have more overlap (combat and martial arts, different types of fashion, different types of music, different appreciation for arts, taking over the world, yada yada yada)

And you wanna know the coolest thing? When you step back from the whole web you can see certain things appear that stand out the most and have some of the most connections.

If you ever intend to go to Final Fusion, those are the things that will likely be the most prominent traits of your whole self

For us? [REDACTED BIRDS for the point of the demonstration], Music, Fashion, Taking over the World, Recovery and Healing, Buddhism, Martial Arts, Arts in general - they're all some of our largest traits that persist in almost all forms as individual parts, partially fused parts, and fully fused parts.

And the BEST part? Doing this didn't require us to touch trauma at all.

Of course in recovery that will come up cause PTSD doesn't ask permission, but its a very low stress way to help improve internal communication and engagement with one another.

[queen-of-dogs-01]

After being too busy to draw for weeks, I finally finished the DTIYS by @mircsy and it looks like I went WAY overboard

OG: