Interactive Mapping Tools

CFRP believes that good planning starts with good data and analytical tools. The Comprehensive Plan process has fallen short on both counts. In doing our own research on the plan, we have developed mapping tools to help answer questions about Charlottesville’s housing situation. We want to share those tools with the community so that residents can come to an informed opinion on the plan. We encourage people to start with our research. But those who want to go further can use the mapping tools below to get further into the details.

September FLUM Overview Map

The map provides an overview of the FLUM citywide. Many correspondents told us they had trouble reading the PDF map provided by RHI as part of Cville Plans Together. We constructed this map to help. You can turn on or off different categories by clicking on “layers” and selecting or deselecting. The categories are constructed at a parcel-by-parcel level and combined into category layers. The interface in standard Google Maps

October FLUM Overview Map

Overview map with October’s revisions. Clickable layers.

If you want to look at the FLUM with clickable parcel level detail available, you can go to our neighborhood maps. Due to Google Maps limitations, we can only have a limited number of items per map, so we had to divide the FLUM into several maps. Choose your neighborhood of interest and drill down here!

Development Opportunities

We posted a research piece about the extent of opportunities for development in the city under current zoning. Here you can go into more detail into the map that underlies that analysis. There are layers for 1) vacant residential parcels, 2) low-value commercial properties and 3) parcels zoned above R-1 which at present contain only a single unit. We want to stress that this is very much a starting point. We are working with screening criteria against a messy city database. Clearly, not all of these properties would prove truly developable. But the map allows users to explore possibilities, which are myriad.

Property Sale Map

In response to repeated references by members of the Planning Commission and City Council to houses selling above their tax assessed values, we did some systematic analysis of assessment-to-sales ration. The Property Sale Map allows anyone to examine a map of property sales, with sales below assessment colored orange and sales above assessment blue, with continuous shading. Click on any property to see details. There are layers for each year from 2014 to 2021.

“The Severely Upzoned”

A parcel-level map showing those parcels that started in one of the R-1 or R-1S zoning types and was assigned to a higher category than General Residential. R-1 group is green and R-1S group is blue. This is the most dramatic transition under the FLUM and the one that has caused the most consternation.

“Coffee Walk”

An interactive version of the map from our piece on walkability (with slightly different walk-time thresholds).

Walk Score

An interactive version of the Walkscore map from our piece on walkability. Walkscore ranges from “highly walkable” in blue to “car-dependent” in red. You can also overlay Medium-Intensity Residential zones on top of the map. You will find that MIR zones do not appear to line up with walkable areas. In fact, our analysis shows that the mean Walkscore for MIR is actually lower than that of General Residential!

Cville’s Multifamily Buildings

We’ve heard and read comments to the effect of “Charlottesville bans multifamily housing.” Obviously, that’s hyperbole, but we wanted to illustrate the prevalence of multifamily housing in the city. Single-family detached is a minority within Cville’s housing stock by units. There are several layers for size-ranges of buildings (number of units), with different colors for each size range. You can also overlay the Medium-Intensity zones from the FLUM (in gold). You will see that the these zones are largely distant from existing MFH and the infrastructure that supports MFH.

Construction Map

We have heard some outlandish claims about lack of housing production in Charlottesville. The city’s numbers are (not unsurprisingly for those who have trawled NDS’s data) a bit of a mess, but between city data and census data, we see approximately 2,600 units of housing added from 2010 to 1q2021. Over 70% of the units are non-single-family-detached.

Changes from May to Final FLUM

The above parcels in blue were tagged Medium-Intensity Residential in the May FLUM map, but ended up in General Residential in the final map.

As always, if you have questions, comments or suggestions for future research/tools, email us.