# Urban Land Use Survey Methods: A Discussion on Their Evolution
## 2 The Early Practice-Led Foundations in Survey Methods
Based on the maps produced (see: London Metropolitan Archives, LAM/4694), we may infer that the survey delivered utilization maps (i.e., land use maps) in their simplest form, in the sense that they only indicate the predominant use of spatial units that sometimes correspond to plots, sometimes to a set of plots of similar use, and sometimes to building blocks or even larger areas. A classification of uses was developed specifically for the Survey, organizing all uses into five broad categories (see Figure 1 in the article published by [PERSON] in 2012 [21]). By today's standards, this would not be a well-developed classification scheme (special uses co-exist with broad categories, some categories have unclear functional identity, while the list of uses is not exhaustive), but the idea of developing a classification scheme to serve and homogenize all surveys sets a methodological milestone. In the United States, the need for land use surveys was expressed by [PERSON] and [PERSON] [13] (p. 114), and especially by [PERSON]. [PERSON], who was recruited as the nation's first full-time public-sector city planner in 1914, devised a nationally influential pack of techniques based on the systematic inventory of land uses (see Figure 5). During the next decades, he applied this pack to more than 500 plans for cities, counties, regions, and states [31]. [PERSON] is criticized for using land use survey methods to pursue an agenda of racial segregation and exclusion in U.S. cities [32] (p. 50); however, the national professional culture was grounded in this system of urban knowledge production, which governed city planning practice through much of the 20 th century [31]. Irrespective of the spoken or unspoken intentions they served at the time, land use surveys quickly became a prerequisite of comprehensive planning, and by the 1930s, it became a _\"customary procedure for city planners to prepare maps showing the existing uses of all property within the municipal area\"_[33] (p. 10). During the same period, large-scale land use surveys took place in the United States. These were initiated as work-relief programs, as had been the case in England two decades earlier. Specifically, during the Great Depression and under New Deal work-relief programs, spanning from 1933 to 1943, millions of able-bodied unemployed workers were put to work on government projects [34; 35]. Under these programs, and for the first time in American history, land use surveys of this scale were conducted. The Chicago Land Use Survey, for example, employed about 10,000 people during its operation and covered over 20,000 city blocks and 212 square miles of urban area [36] (pp. 239-240). Similarly, the Los Angeles Land Use Survey covered approximately 450 square miles within the city boundaries and produced 347 land use maps (see Figure 6). The main cartographic choices for the aforesaid maps were more or less similar and remained unvarying throughout the whole cartographic series. These choices were as follows: (a) the plot was chosen as the basic spatial reference unit for the identification of the predominant use(s), (b) the uses were organized into 12 categories, and (c) only up to two predominant uses per plot were mapped. Of comparable quality and organizational logic are the maps drawn up during the same period in Great Britain, such as the one included in the study _Preliminary Draft Proposals for Post-War Reconstruction in the City of London_[37] (see Figure 7). In this map, (a) the building was selected as the basic spatial reference unit, (b) the uses were organized into nine categories, and (c) only one predominant use was mapped. The choice to map only one predominant use per building is highlighted in the legend of the corresponding map, along with additional cartographic conventions and choices. Additionally, the map indicates the predominant use of larger geographic zones (see capital wording in golden font, very faintly placed above areas with undefined demarcation).