Housing and Urban Development Department of various cities and towns deal with a wide variety of development plans and data. Whether it is about the increase in impervious surface, open space loss, geographic distribution of urban growth, or planning the development effectively guided by data, getting an insight into the whole scenario using interactive tools can help a lot. It is here that interactive maps can help in tracking the development procedure and offer an insight into how things are shaping up.

To begin with, sharing information or data required for administering land in the private and public sectors can often become a headache, especially where different local authorities are entrusted with public land administration responsibilities. An interactive map can make the task easier by helping everyone working on the project get a quick view of the entire scenario. Once the map is created, you will just need to share it online and with a few clicks, collaborators can view the information and data that they seek. This way, interactive maps can speed up e-planning, and cut down on the time and cost that would have otherwise been wasted in getting people and resources at a place for a physical meeting.

Interactive maps can act as an effective tool in the hand of stakeholders who would like to track various urban development plans and see how well their implementation have been carried out. To give their stakeholders an insight into the geographic distribution of the developmental plans, urban planners can blend regulation documents and polices from the geographic perspective into the maps.

Since population growth affects urban growth, interactive maps with such data can help to track the relation between how the population of a particular place grew in size and the rate of urban land increase due to the same. This will help municipalities and urban planners to know how things have gone in the past and plan accordingly for the future.

When urban planners create development plans to house a growing population, they should ensure a balance between the new development plans and the surrounding environment. Encroaching upon forests, wetlands, farmlands etc without any proper planning may pave the path to doom. Interactive maps can help track the temporal and spatial dynamics of land use, thus helping urban planners chalk out their plans accordingly using the digital map data.

By helping to track land use change as well as development, interactive maps can really become effective tools in the hands of urban planners, stakeholders and common public.