SANDAG’s Land Layers are created for use in the Regional Growth Forecast to distribute projected growth for the San Diego region to suitable subareas. These land layers include existing land use, planned land use, land ownership, land available for development, and lands available for redevelopment and infill. The land layers inventory is updated when new information is available.

Many of these data sets are built from the San Diego Geographic Information Source (SanGIS) landbase. The land use information has been updated continuously since 2000 using aerial photography, the County Assessor Master Property Records file, and other ancillary information. The land use information was reviewed by each of the local jurisdictions and the County of San Diego to ensure its accuracy. Although this inventory contains more categorical detail and has better positional accuracy than previous land use inventories, users should be aware that this data may be too generalized for some local planning projects.

Since each General Plan/Community Plan Land Use Elements have their own individualized way of categorizing their future land use designations, an aggregate planned land use code was devised (PLU). Each General Plan/Community Plan land use designation was cross-walked to a SANDAG PLU code. Adjacent parcel polygons with the same land use have been aggregated (dissolved) into a single feature.