Comprehensive plan development and review
We take an interactive approach to creating comprehensive plans by soliciting community input and applying best practices to the creation of master plans.
Our approach
Physically present
We believe in a “boots-on-the-ground” approach to understanding locational challenges. We visit our clients in person, experience the places they inhabit, and create data-driven solutions backed by real-world observations.
People first
In a world quickly being overtaken by boilerplate AI solutions, we take a humanized approach to tackling planning challenges. No LLM can replace the value of expertise combined with critical thinking.
Interdisciplinary
Founded by a computational urban geographer and a qualitative entrepreneurship scholar, we have an unconventionally holistic perspective. This guides our focus on both people and place.
Internationally experienced
Drawing upon extensive international travel and research experience, we have a plethora of tools, techniques, and innovative approaches at our disposal. We fuse global insights with uniquely local solutions.
Our mission
We help municipalities, MPOs, and developers make optimal land use decisions – balancing economic growth with disciplinary best practices. We have an ambitious goal to make 4th coast cities, towns, and villages the 1st places that come to mind when people think of sound urban design. Bold solutions are a part of our DNA, and we’re not afraid to push the boundaries of conventional development.
Start a project with usOur Services
Custom web application development
We develop custom geospatial web applications for retrieving community input, displaying real-time data to the public, and monitoring events of interest.
Land use analytics
We provide analyses on community perspectives, market feasibility, transportation impacts, and locational optimization.
Data pipelines and automation
Need to regularly retrieve data for a niche application or general use within your organization? We can establish a workflow that fits your needs.
Drone photography
Enhance the quality of your city’s or organization’s visual appeal with oblique and overhead imagery and video.
Interactive cartography
We produce interactive web maps of the highest quality that run on minimum system resources using R, leaflet, mapgl, and deck.gl.
Focus groups and survey implementation
Drawing on proven research techniques, we organize focus groups and administer community surveys to uncover problems, preferences, and needs of residents.
Strategic planning
Work with us to develop a focused strategy for economic growth, population growth, public space utilization, or increasing road safety.
Latest Posts
Comparing population densities in states with and without urban growth boundaries
Urban growth boundaries (UGBs) are used to reduce sprawl, preserve farmland, and force development toward city centers. While there are significant debates about their tangible impacts, in theory they should create greater residential population density. While explicitly constraining urban growth is a standard planning practice in most European countries, only three states in the US mandate them: Oregon, Washington, and Tennessee. In this post, I’ll conduct several binary comparisons of residential population densities in states that mandate UGBs with those that do not.
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Creating an interactive 3D terrain model of an idyllic Wisconsin river town with Rayshader in R
3D terrain models are fascinating visual tools, and R’s rayshader
package makes it shockingly simple to produce them in just a few lines of code.
In this post, I’ll demonstrate how to (a) retrieve publicly accessible
terrain data for the state of Wisconsin, (b) crop that dataset to municipality
boundaries using US Census TIGER files, and (c) create the interactive 3D
terrain model.
Candidates for Dutch-style roundabouts in the USA: Who wants to construct the first?
Selfishly, I hope it’s Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
Read moreContact Us
Contact Details
Interested in partnering? Send us an email at the address below or drop us line here – we’d love to hear from you!
Eau Claire, Wisconsin, USA
Email: 4thcoastconsulting@gmail.com