NJ MAP Wins 2020 Planning Excellence Award

Congratulations to NJ MAP for winning the Outstanding Community Engagement and Education Award from the New Jersey chapter of the American Planning Association (APA-NJ). An acknowledgement of this award can be found on the APA-NJ web page for their 2020 Planning Excellence Award recipients.

For those unaware, NJ MAP is an innovative geovisualization platform representing the vision of Dr. John Hasse, AICP, staff, faculty and undergraduate and graduate students at Rowan University, to bring comprehensive, yet accessible Geographical Information Systems analysis to the 21st Century fight for environmental preservation. Entirely funded by competitive grants awarded from both private and public entities, NJ MAP is provided to the public at no cost. NJ MAP “democratizes” data for planning that would typically require special expertise and financial resources not always equitably available to all communities and stakeholders. It's designed to tell NJ’s story in order to educate and foster sound planning and coordinated land conservation. Equipped with this education, New Jersey residents can explore the impact of different environmental planning decisions. 

NJ MAP is awarded by APA-NJ in part for its comprehensiveness in supporting sound planning principles. The tools allow analysis at multiple scales from the parcel, neighborhood, municipality as well as regionally. These tools directly affect the ability of municipalities to meet the challenges of growth and change, which is a central tenet of APA-NJ’s stated mission.

NJ MAP continues to grow and evolve, updated and maintained by a team of core staff with the help of its funders, partners, users, and committees of planning and conservation professionals. NJ MAP's user base has grown substantially in the last few years, with Amazon Analytics indicating 1,300 unique users per month.

To learn more about NJ MAP and the variety of tools and applications it provides, head to the Department's page for the project, or go directly to the NJ MAP website.