Mapping to Protect Los Alamos Open Space (30 Day Map Challenge Day 3, Polygons) (Shallow Thoughts)

Mapping to Protect Los Alamos Open Space (30 Day Map Challenge Day 3, Polygons)

How to Add Data from ArcGIS Web Maps to QGIS

Open Space advocates in Los Alamos county have been fighting the forces of development.

Ordinarily that's not a big problem. This county is wildly supportive of its open space; a huge percent of residents hike, bike, watch birds or otherwise appreciate the natural beauty around us. It helps that a lot of the town is on finger mesas adjacent to un-developable canyons, so you never need to go very far to be in a natural space.

But the county also loves to hire out-of-state consultants any time anything is changing, and a couple of years ago, they hired a consulting firm to rewrite Chapter 16 of our county code, concerning development. That included the zoning maps. The consultants capriciously changed several parcels previously zoned as open space to zones that allow much more development (like six-story apartment or commercial buildings), ignoring public input protesting the changes, and the County Council rubber-stamped the consultants' changes, promising to revisit the open space changes soon.

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