The Association of Central Oklahoma Governments has recently completed its latest inventory of land use in the Oklahoma City Area Regional Transportation Study (OCARTS) area. Collected every five years as part of the agency’s comprehensive planning efforts, this GIS dataset seeks to broadly classify how land is being used in the region; this information is an essential input to scenario modeling, travel demand modeling, and many other analyses. As with many inputs to the agency’s upcoming metropolitan transportation plan, this dataset is intended to represent 2010—the base year for the plan.
In 2010, 39.1% of the OCARTS area was coded as an occupied/developed land use of any type. Despite the fact that the classification scheme and alignment of the data have both changed since the last update, some broad conclusions can still be drawn from the differences between the 2010 dataset and previous versions. Most notably, the region continues to grow and develop:
- Between 2005 and 2010, 28.0 square miles of previously vacant land was developed region-wide; this is an area roughly equivalent to the City of Moore.
- Between 2000 and 2005, 53.1 square miles of previously vacant land was developed region-wide.
- Between 2000 and 2010, 81.1 square miles was developed region-wide; this is an area roughly equivalent to the City of Edmond.
However, this growth is not spread uniformly across the region. Using single-family residential growth as a metric, it becomes apparent where most of this growth is occurring.
Analysis and cleanup of this dataset is ongoing, and a more detailed report discussing the update process is forthcoming.