Geo Leah

Recently I've finally been starting to explore the GIS part of my job more. I attended a training led by our GIS team for Cityworks, a GIS platform for service requests, inspections, and maintenance. I also talked to the GIS team about their systems and goals within our department and how I can be a part of that. They showed me a lot of very useful city maps in ArcGIS Online of existing sidewalks, planned federally- or state-funded large sidewalk projects, and sidewalk condition ratings. I’m currently testing a new method for drawing sidewalk plans using feature classes instead of graphics, which would make it easier to integrate updated sidewalk designs into the existing feature class mapping all the sidewalks in the city. The GIS team suggested this method to me, and I was excited to get to do more with GIS instead of just drawing shapes on a map with graphics. However, I’m having some difficulties reconciling the way sidewalks are drawn and divided into features in this layer wi...

When looking on the City of Richmond jobs website, I found a posting for Planner - Equitable Development (https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/richmond/jobs/4154375/planner-equitable-development?keywords=plan&pagetype=jobOpportunitiesJobs ). This position develops neighborhood and redevelopment plans, analyzes and presents data with ArcGIS and other applications, reviews budgets, and amends zoning and other city codes. The minimum qualifications listed are a bachelor's degree in urban planning, civil or environmental engineering, landscape architecture, etc. and three years of experience, although a combination of training and experience can be used to meet these qualifications. ArcGIS Pro is a preferred qualification, along with a master's degree and a certification as a planner. I would have to work in my current job for a few years in order to meet these qualifications, and possibly take on higher-level responsibilities in my job in order to get more experience with pl...