The Cuyahoga County Greenprint is a collection of web-based tools intended to help planners, environmentalists, and community leaders make good nature- and land-use decisions by visualizing information about their natural and community assets in a map format.

The interactive platform allows users to customize their views and extract data they need for grant applications, reports and community engagement events. We hope these Greenprint tools help you do your job and feed your passions for making Cuyahoga County a more sustainable and natural place.

Vision

Cuyahoga County’s ultimate goal is to be a place where humans and nature both thrive in a balanced fashion. To achieve this, elected officials, civic leaders, developers, and landowners need to make effective land use decisions and exercise best practices that:

  • Make the region both climate resilient and climate attractive,
  • Protect people and property from flooding and storm events,
  • Protect and enhance biological diversity,
  • Provide a regional, multi-modal transportation system which includes a non-motorized trail and greenway network, and
  • Provide, enhance, and maintain outdoor recreation places for health, fitness, and enjoyment.

Greenprint Components

The Cuyahoga County Greenprint, developed and maintained by the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission, is a set of mapping and planning tools to help communities and their staff (particularly planners), civic and environmental leaders, nature advocates and developers do their work. With these tools, users can see their current natural and physical assets, learn about current best practices, and create the maps and files needed for grant applications, plan development, meeting presentations, and other nature-enhancing work.

The Greenprint has three components:

The Explorer

The Greenprint Explorer, the interactive map, lets users visualize the geography and associated features of Cuyahoga County by turning on and off relevant data sets. Users can access information about land, make measurements, create printable maps, and more. The Explorer is organized into two sections:

  • Data: Includes layer management within 11 layer groups for visualization. In addition, a themes area is available for quickly displaying related sets of layers (e.g., Conservation & Protected Land).
  • Tools: For drawing, searching, and querying for desired information or combinations of information

The Manual

The Greenprint Manual provides instructions on how to use the Explorer and its associated tools. It also provides definitions of the various data layers, their sources, date of most recent updates, and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). The Manual can be accessed via the Explorer and is organized into the following sections:

  • Instructions
  • Layers
  • Themes
  • Tools
  • FAQs
  • Data Sources

The Guidebook

The Greenprint Guidebook includes a brief history of the County Greenprint and descriptions of Cuyahoga County’s natural features. The Guidebook complements the Manual, with explanations of the subject matter (rather than the data) with the aim to educate the user on these important topics.

The Guidebook has seven chapters:

Each Guidebook chapter has five sections:

  • What’s Covered: references the data layers or layer groups which display this topic
  • Overview: gives context for the relevance of the various data layers and related information
  • Importance and Value: describes why these topics are important in achieving and maintaining a sustainable region that is in balance with the built environment
  • Recommendations for Communities and Landowners: provides Best Practices for land use and riparian decisions, policies, and actions
  • Resources for More Information: provides hyperlinks to other organizations, information, and tools related to each topic

Learning How to Use the Greenprint

County Planning periodically offers virtual, and some in-person, training sessions.

Use & Feedback

The Cuyahoga County Greenprint is a resource for communities to assure a balanced pattern of development that can accommodate both redevelopment and land conservation. We hope that this Greenprint will serve as a useful guide in your efforts to adapt to climate change, protect habitat, improve water quality, and increase landscape and trail connectivity within Cuyahoga County.

Have feedback? Please share your thoughts.

Top photo by Jason Cohn, courtesy of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy