1 THE USE OF GIS IN URBAN PLANNING

GIS were developed in the late 1960s, yet in the early days very few planning departments installed them because of the prohibitive cost of hardware and the limited capabilities of the software. Most of the early software systems focused on computer mapping with few analytical functions. The most powerful software at that time was grid based (e.g. IMGRID: Sinton 1977). The subsequent fall in the prices of hardware, computer storage, and peripherals, accompanying improvement in the performance of hardware and software (particularly the speed of computer processors), and advances in the data structures and related algorithms of vector-based GIS (see Worboys, Chapter 26), has made GIS more affordable, less time consuming and more workable. Since the early 1980s, there has been a marked increase in the installation of GIS in different levels and departments of urban and regional governments in the developed countries, notably of Europe (Bardon et al 1984; Campbell 1994) and North America (French and Wiggin