The purpose of a land use scheme is to make provision for orderly development and the welfare of the community, by setting out land use rights and development parameters for each property in the municipal area.
A zoning scheme consists of a set of regulations, a zoning map and a register that keeps track of all the amendments taking place on an individual property basis. Although this is a municipal function, municipalities may appoint town planning consultants to assist with this laborious task. We were appointed by both Knysna and Bitou Municipalities to assist them in preparing their new zoning scheme by-laws, which included writing the regulations and creating a zoning map from scratch.
The maps were prepared through an intensive data collection process which involved studying all the town planning files of every property in the municipality and building a database using the geographic information system ArcGIS, a tool used for compiling maps and storing spatial data.
