Land Use Parcels

Overview

The land use parcel table contains information about nationwide parcels by land use, total built square footage, and dwelling unit count. Replica models about 150 million disaggregate parcels nationwide. The built square footage is a modeled representation of total three-dimensional building space. There could be multiple buildings per parcel. Data is released twice a year and is currently available for 2019, 2021 and 2022. It is available for download in CSV format.

Sample Download

Click here to download a CSV sample of Replica's land use parcel table.

Schema

Field Name	Content Type	Sample Value	Description
parcel_id	Integer	7172757950704223187	Unique identifier for a parcel.
BLOCKGROUP	Text	010150014002	The US Census Bureau-assigned GEOID of the census blockgroup containing the parcel.
TRACT	Text	01015001400	The US Census Bureau-assigned GEOID of the census tract containing the parcel.
parcel_sqft	Integer	9422	The square footage of the parcel geometry.
built_sqft	Integer	35870	The total, 3-dimensional built square footage across all floors of all buildings on the parcel. Each parcel could have more than one building. Note: since we do not have ground truth 3D area per building, this value is modeled from parcel attributes, building footprints, and aggregate building area totals.
landuse_l1	Text	mixed_use	Top-level land use of the parcel. Valid values are: • residential • commercial • mixed_use • civic_institutional • industrial • transportation_utilities • agriculture • open_space • other • unknown
landuse_l2_primary	Text	retail	Sub-category of the top-level (L1) land use. For L1s that do not have sub-categories, this value is the same as the L1. Valid values are: • single_family • multi_family • retail • office • non_retail_attraction • healthcare • education • civic_institutional • industrial • transportation_utilities • agriculture • open_space • other • unknown
landuse_l2_secondary	Text	multi_family	Null for parcels that do not have a “mixed_use” L1. For mixed-use parcels, this is another subcategory, and shares the same possible values as landuse_l2_primary.
landuse_l2_tertiary	Text	null	See landuse_l2_secondary.
dwelling_units	Integer	3	Number of dwelling units on the parcel. It will be 0 for all non-residential, non-mixed-use parcels. It is not guaranteed to be >0 for residential/mixed-use parcels, since our parcel land use data is recent (2021) and the dwelling_units is modeled off of scaled 2010 Census block counts.
lat	Latitude	37.434211	Latitude of the parcel centroid, reported in decimal degrees.
lng	Longitude	-122.16801	Longitude of the parcel centroid, reported in decimal degrees.
geometry	Geography	POLYGON((-122.0426972 39.4026794, -122.0403184 39.4026725, -122.0402856 39.4062184, -122.0426579 39.4062214, -122.0426972 39.4026794))	Parcel geometry

Methodology

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

Parcel-level land use data
Aggregate 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.

Replica Land Use Categories

L1 Category	L2 Category
Residential	Single-family Multi-family
Commercial	Office Retail (Includes restaurants & bars) Non-retail attraction (Includes museums, stadiums, golf courses)
Mixed-Use	[Primary use]
Industrial	n/a
Civic/Institutional	Education Healthcare Other civic/institutional
Transportation/Utilities	n/a
Open Space	n/a
Agriculture	n/a
Other	n/a
Unknown	n/a