Land Use

Overview

Land use data is available to Replica users via Studies, Dashboards, and Data Downloads. The land-use data is derived from national coverages of parcel and point-of-interest data which we aggregate to higher-level geographies (e.g., census blocks, census tracts, cities, etc.).

Land use data available via download from Replica provides users a summary of the land uses by area for a selected study area and set of sub-geographies (e.g., census blocks, tracts, or cities), and includes the following categories:

Residential Single Family
Residential Multi Family
Commercial Retail
Commercial Office
Commercial Non-Retail Attraction
Mixed Use Residential
Mixed Use Commercial
Mixed Use Industrial
Mixed Use Other
Industrial
Civic Healthcare
Civic Education
Civic Other
Transportation Utilities
Total Open Space
Total Agriculture
Other
Unknown

Land use data is also available to users via Replica Studies and Dashboards. When accessing land use within these environments, the same categories are available, however the four mixed-use types listed above for the download are aggregated to a single ‘Mixed Use’ category.

Methodology

Replica's land use data is modeled from a composite of public and private sources:

Parcel-level land use data
Point-of-Interest (POI) data (e.g. restaurants, stadiums, theaters)
Building footprint data
Census housing unit data

Parcel-level land use data was collected for an area that covers 99.9% of the total US population. These parcels were then enriched with data on POIs, (e.g. restaurants, retail stores, and museums). Parcels with unknown land use were modeled based on aggregate land use data and other attributes (e.g. POIs and parcel size). Lastly, parcels were matched to buildings to estimate building area and mixed-use buildings.

Land use data includes land area (i.e, parcel or lot use) and building area (built area used for each specific use), both in square feet, as well as dwelling units. Replica land uses are categorized per the table below. All land use categories are displayed in-app and are visualized on the map, with the exception of the “Civic/Institutional” subcategories of Education, Healthcare and Other civic/institutional. Data for these subcategories are available in the download files.

For mixed-use parcels, Replica estimates primary, secondary, (and tertiary) uses. For land area, these parcels will show up as “Mixed-Use” in the application, and broken down by primary use in the download file (e.g. “Mixed-Use Residential”). For building area, built square footage on the parcel is split across each individual use, depending on the categories and the number of stories of the building, if available.