GIS

GIS has made planning better. It is as simple as that. Most planning offices have some type of gis capability. From offices that just use gis readers as quicker more efficient access to reference maps to offices that run the hold suite of ESRI products and employee analysts to crunch data and perform modeling and suitability studies. The use of the orthopohotography and roads and parcel overlays has given the planner a wider view of the landscape a geographic prospective that some planners may have not had.
One of my gripes about GIS in local planning jurisdictions is that the technicians are usually not housed in a planning office, but rather in a separate department, a tax office, or as an information systems office. Because I think the nature of GIS is Geographic at its core believe that each gis technician should have some fundamental training in geography and be placed in all the above mentioned offices. I also believe that using a county’s lone GIS tech as a cadastral mapper is a waste of the software and talent. Cadastral mapping is needed and important, but gis was not created for that.