Smart Growth for Dallas Decision Support Tool

Smart Growth for Dallas Decision Support Tool - Overview

The Smart Growth for Dallas Decision Support Tool was created in partnership between The Trust for Public Land, bcWORKSHOP and the Texas Trees Foundation and was officially launched on Tuesday, October 30th!

This public platform is a multi-disciplinary effort to improve sustainability and resilience of Dallas by creating close-to-home parks, trails, and green spaces for the entire city. At the core of this effort is an online mapping platform that identifies priority locations in Dallas where investments in green assets – such as parks, trees, or green stormwater infrastructure – can address questions of environmental sustainability, social equity, and urban resilience, and help our city thrive in the 21st century.

This mapping platform, called the “Decision Support Tool,” allows for users to make data-driven decisions that are strategic and meet community needs. By using geographic information systems (GIS) technology, the platform can highlight areas where multiple objectives can be accomplished at the same time, such as reducing urban heat and flash flood risk. The Decision-Support Tool is a GIS-powered, web-based resource that incorporates customized data layers into geospatial maps to prioritize parcels throughout the City of Dallas, based on five key planning objectives: cool, connect, absorb/protect, health, and equity. These objectives are stacked to find areas where investment can be best targeted to address the urban heat island, pedestrian connectivity, stormwater management, and public and community health. It also highlights which of these priorities might be a consideration at specific locations.

• Link to Smart Growth for Dallas Decision Support Tool: https://web.tplgis.org/Smart_Growth_Dallas/

• Link to Smart Growth for Dallas Project Overview Downloadable PDF: https://web.tplgis.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/About_Smart_Growth_Dallas.pdf

 

Smart Growth for Dallas - Background

With a growing population and booming economy, Dallas has the opportunity to address some of its most persistent challenges: health care, water supply, transportation, heat waves, flood control, and equity.

The Trust for Public Land, in partnership with bcWORKSHOP and the Texas Trees Foundation, is helping Dallas understand how its parks, trails, and green spaces can help address these questions of environmental sustainability, economic inequality, and urban resilience—and thrive in the 21st century.

Smart Growth for Dallas is an initiative to improve the environmental, social, and economic resilience of Dallas by creating close-to-home parks, trails, and green spaces for the entire city. Initiated in 2016, this effort is now in a second phase to expand the analysis completed in the first phase with new data, consider additional issues, and build on partnerships to develop parks, open space and trails that can provide the most benefits and best serve the communities in the City of Dallas.