Asheville’s planners are on the map

Posted on by Cecil Bothwell

The North Carolina Chapter of the American Planning Association accorded the city of Asheville an “Outstanding Planning Award” for its mapAsheville Development Mapper during an event held in Chapel Hill on Sept. 28.

The awards program recognized the Asheville project in the “2007 Special Theme, Innovations in Planning Services, Education and Public Involvement” category.

Development Mapper, part of the city’s suite of Web-based applications, is an innovative tool to provide increased access to information about development activity. The Web site allows multiple means of navigation and contains details about proposed projects, including site plans and staff reports.

Curious about that new project on the corner? Development Mapper offers information on prospective and ongoing developments, site plans, aerial photographs, zoning details and parcel numbers. The new site should prove helpful to anyone with an interest in Asheville’s near-term future.

— Cecil Bothwell, staff writer

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About Cecil Bothwell
A writer for Mountain Xpress since three years before there WAS an MX--back in the days of GreenLine. Former managing editor of the paper, founding editor of the Warren Wilson College environmental journal, Heartstone, member of the national editorial board of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, publisher of Brave Ulysses Books, radio host of "Blows Against the Empire" on WPVM-LP 103.5 FM, co-author of the best selling guide Finding your way in Asheville. Lives with three cats, macs and cacti. His other car is a canoe. Paints, plays music and for the past five years has been researching and soon to publish a critical biography--Billy Graham: Prince of War:
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3 thoughts on “Asheville’s planners are on the map”

  1. orulz

    Snagged a statewide award- but they don’t even keep it up to date!

    They did a great job for the first three weeks it was available, but it was hardly updated at all between March and September. Fortunately, between those months, we didn’t miss much – only a couple projects by the name of “Ellington” and “Zona.” And there’s still nothing up about “Horizons” on Merrimon or 919 Haywood or Montford Commons, even though these are all in various stages of review by the city. All of the above will have a huge impact on their respective neighborhoods – and not a peep about them on what’s supposed to be a definitive citizens’ resource for developments projects in the works.

    It has the potential to be a very powerful tool – but only if they keep it up-to-date.

  2. Avl Tao

    That’s interesting. Orulz, do you know which planning staff person is charged with the responsibility of updating…. or is that kind of murky and muddled?

  3. orulz

    I’m not sure who’s responsible for keeping the data up to date. Back in August, I sent an e-mail to WebGIS@ashevillenc.gov and got a prompt response from the city’s GIS and Applications Services Manager (presumably the one who manages the GIS system though not the data on it.)

    He passed my concerns on, and a couple weeks later, the mapper was brought back up to date (though none of the projects between March and September ever made it up.) It seems to be sliding out of date yet again since then.

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