Proof. Core to Kern.
Ponte Lombardia
A search map that shows, for every municipality in Lombardy, which land the plans set aside for development, with surface and designation.
IndustryProperty development / Urban planning
Regioneu
The challenge
Ponte Sviluppo (a pseudonym) is an Italian property developer. It looks for building land in Lombardy, including for commercial, industrial and logistics use.
Lombardy has 1,503 municipalities, and each has its own zoning plan, the PGT. Some publish it as map data, others only as PDFs. Finding out where land is set aside for development meant searching one municipality at a time.
What we built
First, find out where the data lives. An audit of the hundred largest municipalities found 83 of them in the region’s map data. The region combines the municipal plans into one map with real polygons, though the detail varies by municipality.
Surface should come from geometry, not from a PDF map. Real polygons make that possible. A language model reading maps is not reliable enough for a hard filter like size.
The municipality has the final say, not the region. The regional map is where you find leads. So the app reports what the regional source indicates. When two layers disagree, it shows both. And when the regional map has nothing, that does not mean the plan has nothing.
Testing with the client showed that looking up a single plot needs more than the opportunity layers. The existing urban fabric and the implementation plans have to be on the map too.
The blueprint
Coverage audit
We measured, for each municipality, what map data exists and how deep it goes. Few polygons means thin, so check it. None means the data lives elsewhere, such as the municipality’s own site.
Regional extract
Transformation areas, brownfields and regeneration areas for all of Lombardy, pulled in one go. Every run is reconciled against the server: totals match and per-municipality sums close. Computed surface is within a median 0.06 to 0.07% of the region’s own figure.
Search map
Type a municipality and the map shows its opportunity areas, with a surface filter. A click gives surface, designation and the fields from the plan. It works in Italian and English and runs offline, apart from the base map.
Urban fabric and sources
Beneath the opportunity areas sits the existing urban fabric: 534,123 polygons, plus 27,180 implementation plans. A click shows every layer under that point, each with its source. The commercial filter follows the mapping the client’s technician confirmed. The regional designations have no category for logistics or food and beverage, and the app says so rather than inventing one.
Validation with the client
The client sends places, we look them up and reply with screenshots, and the client checks them against Italian sources. Every result is logged as a hit or a miss, with the reason. Accuracy is measured, not assumed.
Results
- Findability
- Zoning for building land in northern Italy, findable straight away
Tech & tools
- Geodata extraction (ArcGIS REST)
- GeoJSON
- Surface computed from geometry
- Leaflet map
- Per-run data reconciliation
- Bilingual (IT/EN)
Want something like this?
Tell us what you have in mind. You get a blueprint with phases and one fixed price.