Welcome to Local Decision Maker
Our Mission ...
to assist Indiana communities in making informed and integrated land use and economic development decisions.
Local Decision Maker (LDM) is a powerful decision support system for comprehensive planning. LDM brings together the data, current research, analyses, mapping tools, and models to assist communities throughout the planning process. If vexing issues such as too much growth, too little growth, loss of natural resources, poor employment outlook, or declining school populations have driven your community to the point that change is wanted, you will find LDM useful. LDM will help you assess existing conditions, develop a realistic vision of the future, identify future development strategies, and select a preferred strategy consistent with the community's economic, natural resource, social and cultural objectives and projected resource bases. Conflicts are unavoidable given competing objectives. Overall, we expect communities that use LDM will find ways to navigate through these conflicts and develop a comprehensive plan supported by the community.
Because we follow the standard 4-phase comprehensive planning process, county planners, planning consultants and public officials will be more comfortable using LDM. If you are new to the comprehensive planning process, please spend some time in the Resources section. In addition, we recently added the map to the right that summarizes existing planning efforts throughout Indiana. Before starting a planning effort, you may want to visit some of the counties that have recently completed or updated their comprehensive plans.
Phase 1 - Inventory and Analysis
A community's existing conditions, some say current state-of-affairs, help a community learn about itself. The inventory helps a community identify available economic, social, cultural and environmental resources, opportunities and constraints.
Phase 2 - Vision and Objectives
Current conditions determine where a community is headed,and where it needs to go. In this next phase we use these building blocks to help the community shape a vision of its future. It is also at this point that the objectives, or building blocks of the vision, are developed.
Phase 3 - Alternative Strategies
There is typically more than one way for a community to reach an objective, and fulfilling one objective often effects other objectives. In this phase we examine the different approaches available for each objective, and present the options in a manner that allows the planners to choose the approach that makes the most sense for their community.
Phase 4 - Plan Implementation
In the final phase we will focus on the details that will allow a community to realize their plan. Objectives and strategies are put into words and combined with maps to compose the policy for the community's future.
Tutorials now Available!
Our short video tutorials demonstrate the features available in the interactive mapping tool. The tutorial topics cover everything from the basic layout and usage of the mapping tool to task based work flows and examples of how to use the maps in your comprehensive plan. The tutorials can be found in the GIS Maps section of this site.
Robert McCormick