Cities court development via Internet

Brick and mortar increasingly starts with a click.

Anxious to compete for economic opportunities, cities are using technology designed to ease logjams in planning departments as a potential job generator by providing information online.

By Marc Albert, BUSINESS WRITER Oakland Tribune

Geographic information systems — a term for a combination of databases, maps, satellite and aerial images — are helping disseminate data about communities and business opportunities.

The collective hope among the growing number of cities is that easy access to information will lure jobs and development. But critics assert that the technology isn’t being properly used and may be only partially effective.

"People who are looking to open a business can go online and bring up a map and find … a place near transportation … near the airport, near population centers," said Brian Baker, a spokesman for Autodesk, a San Rafael-based maker of urban design software that has sold GIS services to many cities.

But anyone familiar with an area would likely have a good feel for a site. Some experts say GIS mapping is another weapon in an arsenal for economic development — a way to spur interest. Other experts maintain that firms that cities want to attract with such services — like large retailers — already do their own research.

"A lot of people use the demographics to find the first threshold of where they want to locate," said Armando Aguirre, senior vice president of the Retail Services Group at Kosmont Realty Corp., a Los Angeles-based retail location consultant.

"It helps you move up the list and be location A instead of location B or C or D," he said. "Anytime you provide information, you are ahead of cities that don’t."

But Aguirre said most retailers do their own homework.

"Most of this is done by the companies in house," he said.

Autodesk has sold software to Oakland, Fremont, Foster City and Santa Rosa, and it put them on the map. A competitor, Berkeley-based GIS Planning Inc., counts San Francisco, Vallejo and Pinole among 46 entities using its software.

Baker acknowledged that cities could provide school test scores, transit routes and stops, crime statistics, flood potential and earthquake hazards. But, he noted, "It’s up to the city what information they put out."

In reality, cities have little incentive to advertise liabilities.

"The technology is fine," said John Radke, director of the Geographic Information Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley. "It could be a lot better. It’s fine for delivering info to people."

There are myriad ways to implement GIS mapping, and various sites provide different information — with varying degrees of success. Autodesk said its software has made it faster and cheaper for Foster City to notify those near proposed developments of public meetings. Foster City’s site ( http://www.fostercity.org and click on City Maps), among other things, lets users pinpoint street lamps. Rather than phoning the public works department when, for example, the street light on the southwest corner of Fourth Street and D expires, citizens could retrieve the light’s serial number from the Web and report it. Baker said this lowers costs for cities and improves responsiveness.

Fremont allows users cursory access to its Megan’s Law database, (gisweb.fremont.gov/megan). The law requires paroled sex offenders to register with local law enforcement and for the information to be made publicly available. As in other cities, residents still must visit the local police department for names, addresses and pictures of offenders.

"For a local citizen, it gives a first glance," said Christine Frost, Fremont’s Geographic Information Systems manager. An address can be plotted and the map zoomed in or out and offenders show up plotted as blue or red dots.

But Fremont’s main use is internal.

"Typically someone would come to the public counter (in the planning office)," she said, "and ask, ‘What is the zoning on a parcel? Am I in a flood zone?’ A clerk would have to pull up five different paper maps to find the answers."

Putting the information together electronically "puts all these disparate data sets into one place," she said.

Frost said GIS aerial and satellite maps help emergency services plot obstructions such as fences or dead ends that could prove useful in an emergency.

The sites do have problems. Pinole’s site seemed unable to load. Emeryville’s site (ims.spaceimaging.com/emeryville/), operated by a third company, Colorado-based Space Imaging, lets users map test bores in and around former industrial sites for toxic contamination. However, the site no longer lists toxics, or compares soil concentrations with levels considered safe.

Oakland’s site ( http://www.oaklandexplorer.com — which describes its downtown as "booming" — seems more a tool for real estate brokers. It lists potential development sites and provides ways to contact property sellers or owners of vacant buildings.

One can get some demographic information, but there’s no access to city crime statistics or the educational level of the work force — information likely important to firms considering relocating to Oakland.

There are of course some interesting tidbits. "Downtown" Oakland, an area stretching from the Estuary to Grand Avenue, has 18,929 residents — less than 5 percent of the city’s population. Not exactly burgeoning with neighborhoods serving retail opportunities outside of the lunchtime crowd.

The area’s population is also predominantly poor. More than 37 percent of downtown households earn $15,000 a year or less. Fewer than 4 percent earn more than $100,000.

You’d also learn that downtown denizens spent $2.7 million on video rentals in 2000, $3.7 million on men’s apparel and $5.6 million at liquor stores.

"I think if you want to attract business, you want to put more than a list of available parcels on the Web," Radke said. "I’d want to know about the infrastructure — highways, railways how much they charge for sewage, the tax rates, I’d want to know about the work force," he said.

Marc Albert can be reached at (510) 208-6414

http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82~10834~1233627,00.html