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Map of the Month

November 2007

The map of the month was published recently by the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research (SPUR) organization, and it shows the greater Bay Area “megaregion” that now extends beyond the traditional nine counties that touch San Francisco Bay.

October 2007

The region’s Smart Growth Vision calls for the Bay Area to develop as a “network of neighborhoods,” where future growth is concentrated near transit and in the existing communities that surround the San Francisco Bay. This month’s map shows the network of Proposed Priority Development Areas (PDAs) throughout the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area. The areas around transit stations and along major developed corridors are two examples of where the region’s smart-growth vision would prefer to see new housing development. Led by ABAG, the regional agencies are currently meeting with our local partners to discuss the details of PDA agreements regarding development intensities and objectives, identify local jurisdictions willing to implement these agreements, and locate the parts of the region meriting incentives and other special assistance to achieve the desired level of development.

September 2007

The September map illustrates the change in the amount of developed land from 1984 to 2004 within the San Francisco Bay Area. The map also contains a chart with similar information for other metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) in California. The Southern California Association of Governments has the largest land area of any MPO in the state, and has also seen the largest amount of growth. However, the percentage growth in the Los Angeles region was lower than either the Bay Area or the San Diego region over the two-decade time period.

July 2007

This month’s map depicts the distribution of employment by sector within the employment centers of the San Francisco Bay Area. Employment centers are defined using the number of jobs per square mile; areas with greater than 5,000 jobs per square mile are generally considered to be employment centers. The six employment sectors are those used in ABAG’s Projections 2007, and are defined using North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) codes. The data comes from the California Employment Development Department (EDD), and describes the number of full-time and part-time jobs for which employers pay workers wages or salaries. This employment data excludes business owners, self-employed persons, unpaid volunteers, family workers and private household workers.

May 2007

This month’s map highlights the effects of urban density on the amount of carbon dioxide (CO²) emissions per household. As you can see from the map of the Bay Area, lower per capita CO² emissions generally appear in the most densely populated parts of the region due to households in those communities driving less and shorter distances compared to households in more suburban or rural areas.

April 2007

The map this month depicts the emerging concept of treating the San Francisco Bay Area and other large U.S. metropolitan areas as “mega-regions”. The ten mega-regions shown on the map account for 68% of the nation’s population, 78% of U.S. gross domestic product, and over 90% of the traffic congestion and air pollution besetting the nation’s residents.

March 2007

The map this month depicts the ratio of total trips by origin Travel Analysis Zone (TAZ) to destination TAZ, based upon the Projections 2005 forecast for the year 2030. The green areas on this map depict locations where there is a higher number of residential land uses than employment land uses, thus creating more trips produced than trips attracted. The red areas on this map depict locations where there is a higher number of employment land uses, which produce more trips attracted than trips produced. We use this information to analyze the travel characteristics of the region’s residents, as well as to better understand the impacts of Jobs/Housing mismatch on the region’s transportation infrastructure.

February 2007

Goods movement industries play an important role in the region’s economy. However, they are under significant pressure from land use development trends, which pose a number of potential problems including increased land use conflicts, increased truck travel and tail pipe emissions, and higher costs of goods distribution. The map depicts one of several key goods movement corridors where MTC has identified and mapped existing industrial lands that are used for goods movement related activities. The Oakland corridor is approximately 9,159 acres in size, with about 6,000 acres devoted to existing goods movement related land uses. After examining local planned land use designations for this area, we estimate that about 1,500 acres, or 25 percent of the current goods movement land uses, are “at risk” of being converted to non-goods movement related land uses.

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