Maxime Pinto
05/11/2010
Intro To GIS
The Circus Is Coming To Town
Pinto and Friends, a legendary family owned circus is coming to Boston to bring smiles and joy to the
faces of Boston. Unfortunately, since its last passage in Boston, a lot of land has been developed upon,
and the circus does not know where to pitch its tent. P&F has hired students enrolled at Tufts GIS
department to find it a location, in the Boston area, that meets the following requirements: needs free
plots of land that are large than .5 acres and within a distance of 200m of a Tstop
Step 1: Finding Appropriate Land Parcel
1. I first used the Census_Town_Poly.shp layer and from there, using the select feature tool, made
a layer for the boston area.
2. From the LandUse2005_Poly layer I create a sub-layer for the Boston area by selecting by
location.
3. I also added the Open_Space layer from the Boston BRA folder and selected the Urban Wild
Areas, just to get a higher level of accuracy, since that layer operates at a larger scale.
4. I then figured out what type of land was appropriate for the circus. I selected the Land_USE
description by attribute and did LandUse_Description and selected: Cropland, Open Land,
Participation recreation (according to MassGIS metadata it means Facilities used by the public
for active recreation. Includes ball fields, tennis courts, basketball courts, athletic tracks, ski
areas, playgrounds, and bike paths plus associated parking lot) , Pasture and Spectator
Recreation (according to MassGIS metadata include universities and professional stadiums
designed for spectators as well as zoos, amusement parks, drive-in theaters, fairgrounds, race
tracks and associated facilities and parking lots).
5. Once those features were selected and was converted into a separate layer I then did select by
location and selected those areas which were within 200m of a T stop.
6. I then repeated this process for Open Space. The only difference being that the land use
description was different. They were: Common Garden, Urban Wild and Parks and Playgrounds.
We can see some overlap
between the land use and open
space layer. This will create
redundancy when calculating the
total area in acres that is available
Areas in Red are
from the Land Use
2005 Layer
Areas in Green pertain to
the Open Space layer
7.
8. I then, using the Field Calculator calculated the total area of Land Use in acres.
Original Area is calculated
in meters
Using the field calculator
and the calculate
geometry too I put the
Area in acres
9.
10. I then using the summarize tool, summarize the land acreage availability by land type.
I then did the same thing for Open space. However, the open space area was already calculated in acres.
I therefore did not need to use the “calculate geometry”.
The sum total area in the Open Space summary table is given in single digit (whole value) whereas in the
Land Use one they aren’t. (This is because when I used the field calculator I forgot to put field type as
double. However, even though it is less precise, I find it better to give the area in terms of whole
acreage.
Conclusion: According to my findings, there are 79 plots of land within 200m of a Tstop that can be used
by Pinto & Friends to set up their show. However, there is a lot of overlap that hasn’t been taken into
account.