The Suitability of an Orthophotomap in the Process of Approving Local Spatial Development Plans

One of the assumptions of the draft of the Act on Urban Planning and Construction Code is to strengthen social participation in creating spatial policies at all levels of planning. As part of the conducted research, a questionnaire was designed for the purposes of this article. The research was carried out on people who took part in the expositions of Local Spatial Development Plans (LSDP) and public discussions taking place in the communes of Siemianowice Śląskie and Pszów. The conducted questionnaire inquiry pointed to the low level of public awareness regarding procedures, as well as the lack of understanding of these documents due to the illegible form of the presentation of the approved local plans provided by the Act on planning and spatial development. Only 26% of the respondents declared to have good knowledge of the procedures for developing and approving local plans. The draft of the Urban and Construction Code Act, which is to replace the mentioned act, provides for a substantiation of the LSDP that may contain a visualization presenting the local plan regulations in a graphic manner, understandable to people who do not have technical knowledge, including digitally excluded persons. The conducted inquiry has shown that more than half of all respondents admitted that the usage of both a large-scale map and an orthophotomap as a cartographic background for the visualization of LSDP findings was by far the most legible. The proposed solutions can be introduced directly into the regulation on the detailed rules for the preparation of spatial planning acts. The statutory delegation for its issue was included in article 243 of the Act on Urban Planning and Construction Code draft published on 23rd November 2017 on the website of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Construction.