Martin County Residential Capacity Analysis
Martin County officials use objective, defensible data on housing demand and supply to guide future growth and development.
In the Martin County Comprehensive Plan, Urban Service Boundaries are established to prevent “leapfrog” development, or major residential projects developing outside of the county’s service area. Martin County, Florida uses a Residential Capacity Analysis to guide development into these service areas and to understand when development will eventually extend outside the service area.
For the Martin County Residential Capacity Analysis, understanding the location and timing of future housing is crucially important. By incorporating several other data layers, such as the National Wetland Inventory and species habitat database, Martin County can plan for the critical shift of when residential development will need to move outside the service area. If traditional sources of land use data were used to assume vacant residential lands are suitable for future housing, it would significantly overestimate Martin County’s capacity to provide future housing.
