The following data is provided as a public service, for informational purposes only. This data should not be construed as legal advice. Users of this data should independently verify its determinations prior to taking any action under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) or any other law. The State of California makes no warranties as to accuracy of this data.
General plan land use element data was collected from 532 of California's 539 jurisdictions. An effort was made to contact each jurisdiction in the state and request general plan data in whatever form available. In the event that general plan maps were not available in a GIS format, those maps were converted from PDF or image maps using geo-referencing techniques and then transposing map information to parcel geometries sourced from county assessor data. Collection efforts began in late 2021 and were mostly finished in late 2022. Some data has been updated in 2023. Sources and dates are documented in the "Source" and "Date" columns with more detail available in the accompanying sources table. Data from a CNRA funded project, performed at UC Davis was used for 7 jurisdictions that had no current general plan land use maps available. Information about that CNRA funded project is available here: https://databasin.org/datasets/8d5da7200f4c4c2e927dafb8931fe75d
Individual general plan maps were combined for this statewide dataset. As part of the aggregation process, contiguous areas with identical use designations, within jurisdictions, were merged or dissolved. Some features representing roads with right-of-way or Null zone designations were removed from this data. Features less than 4 square meters in area were also removed.