Online Land Planning to Support MIF STC Goals
Geotourism needs to be considered carefully. In doesn't work everywhere. Today, there are literally thousands of property owners who believe that they have a 'sure fire' resort destination or cultural attraction for the world to see.
Imagine a close knit Italian family that owns 400 hectares in the wine province of Avellino, a Sierra Leone businessman who wants to develop a unique tourist resort around the diamond industry to boast his country’s economy, a reclusive rancher who discovered water on his property and imagines a sustainable guest experience in New Mexico, or a small village near Jiamusi, China trying to get a micro loan for a cultural tourist destination to host an ...
About You
Contact Information
Title
Mr.
First name
Rick
Last name
Abelson
Your job title
Director
Name of your organization
Online Land Planning
Organization type
LLC
Annual budget/currency
Confidential
Mailing address
Redondo Beach, California
Telephone number
(310) 594-7782
Postal/Zip Code
90277
Country
United States
Email address
Alternative email address
Alternative email address
Your idea
This will be the address used to plot your entry on the map.
Street Address
856 Avenue B
City
Redondo Beach
State/Province
Postal/Zip Code
90277
Country
United States
Geotourism Challenge Addressed by Entrant
Quality of tourist experience and educational benefit to tourists , Quality of benefit to residents for the destination , Quality of tourism management by destination leadership , Quality of stewardship of the destination.
Organization size
Small (1 to 100 employees)
Indicate sector in which you principally work
Destination-stewardship business
Year innovation began
2008
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Indicate sector in which you principally work
Destination aesthetics, General destination stewardship/management.
Name Your Project
Online Land Planning to Support MIF STC Goals
Describe Your Idea
Geotourism needs to be considered carefully. In doesn't work everywhere. Today, there are literally thousands of property owners who believe that they have a 'sure fire' resort destination or cultural attraction for the world to see.
Imagine a close knit Italian family that owns 400 hectares in the wine province of Avellino, a Sierra Leone businessman who wants to develop a unique tourist resort around the diamond industry to boast his country’s economy, a reclusive rancher who discovered water on his property and imagines a sustainable guest experience in New Mexico, or a small village near Jiamusi, China trying to get a micro loan for a cultural tourist destination to host an ...
Innovation
What is the goal of your innovation? Please describe in one sentence the kind of impact, change, or reform your approach is intended to achieve.
To assist property owners, investors, communites and government agencies throughout the world by creating authentic, sustainable and affordable land use plans to enhance the guest experience.
Please write an overview of your project. Include how your approach supports or embodies geotourism or destination stewardship. This text will appear when people scroll over the icon for your entry on the map located on the competition homepage.
Geotourism needs to be considered carefully. In doesn't work everywhere. Today, there are literally thousands of property owners who believe that they have a 'sure fire' resort destination or cultural attraction for the world to see.
Imagine a close knit Italian family that owns 400 hectares in the wine province of Avellino, a Sierra Leone businessman who wants to develop a unique tourist resort around the diamond industry to boast his country’s economy, a reclusive rancher who discovered water on his property and imagines a sustainable guest experience in New Mexico, or a small village near Jiamusi, China trying to get a micro loan for a cultural tourist destination to host an international winter art festival.. These opportunities all exist.
But unless property owners have a simple and affordable way to access logical land planning tools and development strategies to help make informed decisions about geotourism and destination stewardship they will be forever discouraged.
Explain in detail why your approach is innovative
Online land planning is achieved through a collaborative effort of international design professionals that use internet technology to provide expert advice and affordable solutions on sustainable land planning issues. We deliver within three weeks, initial concept master plan booklets right to your desktop. Using basic site information provided by the property owner, we can accomplish most of the work using the world wide web, email, Google Earth, Skype and our secure .ftp site. This methodology helps us reduce our carbon footprint to virtually zero and we can pass along over 50% savings on professional fees versus the traditional approach used by most large planning offices.
Impact
Describe the degree of success you have had to date. How do you measure, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the impact on sustainability or enhancement of local culture, environment, heritage, or aesthetics? How has it transformed or contributed to the power of place or demonstrated the sustainability of tourism? How does your approach minimize negative impacts?
As land planners, our goal is to minimize conflicts and maximize consensus. We truly understand what empathy means and look at each planning solution from multiple perspectives. Our goal is to try and do most of our work online; using the internet to help access remote places and people who do not have the resources or knowledge of how to make informed land use decisions. In some cases, we advise property owners that they are not prepared to undertake the projects that they are suggesting. In other cases, at the urging of the property owner, we may need to visit some locales first hand. Recently, we have been on site in Maroochydore, Australia to assess the local culture, environment, heritage and aesthetics of the Sunshine Coast for a major update to an important cultural attraction. OLP also collaborates as a team member with social planners and economists throughout the world who are often hired seperately by property owners or local governments.
In what ways are local residents actively involved in your work, including participation and community input? How has the community responded to or benefited from your approach?
Local residents play a very important role in our work. When we visit project sites, we collect data and conduct workshops and charettes with resident groups to focus our efforts, get a snapshot on daily life and solicit feedback at the initial stages of our planning process. When data is already available and we can't visit the site, these documents can be transmitted to us for review and we ask additional questions which the property owner can follow up on.
How does your program promote traveler enthusiasm, satisfaction, and engagement with the locale?
OLP promotes traveler enthusasm and satisfaction by creating a sustainable land planning approach and development strategy that reinforces a truly authentic 'must see' visitor experience. Our work is deemed a success when locals embrace it and recommend it to tourists. Also, the property owner should be able to make money and the local government officials consider this destination as contributing positively to the community.
Describe how your work helps travelers and local residents better understand the value of the area's cultural and natural heritage, and educates them on local environmental issues.
Each planning project is unique. We start by asking the property owner what the 'big idea' should be. Usually, they have a pretty good idea of the key attributes of the site - but may not know how to make it tangible. Once we get their idea, we research and brainstorm with them either in person or via the internet and quickly put together a storyboard and script that reinforces the authentic, cultural and natural strengths and weaknesses of their idea. We then cretae a simple land plan and test it with other local residents and our roster of international experts for authenticity and economic viability. We runderstand the visitor sequence and have developed a template of how guests typically experience a cultural attraction. We pace them through what we call - ADROIT, which stands for - Arrival, Decompression, Reception, Orientation, Interpretation and Terminus.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
How is your initiative currently financed? If available, provide information on your finances and organization that could help others. Please list: Annual budget, annual revenue generated, size of part-time, full-time and volunteer staff.
Online Land Planning, LLC is a for-profit business. Our financial information is confidential.
If we are selected, we will make additional information available ,as requested. General background about our company, our work and our core team members can be found on the OLP website at http://www.onlinelandplanning.com
Is your initiative financially and organizationally sustainable? If not, what is required to make it so? Is there a potential demand for your innovation?
We are financially and organizationally sustainable. The demand for our services continues to grow and the potential for our innovation is quite broad. Since we are web-based, there is virtually no overhead and limited expenses. In this way, we can pass on huge savings to get initial projects for property owners started - for reasonable fees.
What are the main barriers you encounter in managing, implementing, or replicating your innovation? What barriers keep your program from having greater impact?
Online Land Planning appears to have no major barriers managing, implementing or replicating our innovation. One improvement that we would like to see happen faster, would be the translation of our website into many local languages besides English. We believe that this would enhance our visibility and increase our opportunities throughout Asia, South and Central America.
What is your plan to expand or further develop your approach? Please indicate where/how you would like to grow or enhance your innovation, or have others do so.
Online Land Planning is revolutionizing the land planning industry. We are innovators in our field as the only 100% internet based approach to land planning. Because of our strong web ranking, interested property owners and government agencies can find us on their own. We merely respond to inquiries and make decisions based on the quality of each project, our workload and our potential to have positive impact.
The Story
Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers' marketing material.
Rick Abelson RLA, CLARB
Rick Abelson is a recognized leader in creating culturally significant land planning developments worldwide. His peers regard him as an original thinker and an internationally respected planner of destination attractions, mixed-use town centers, urban infill and sustainable developement. His early participation and strategic forward-thinking adds immediate financial value to properties seeking optimum land definition. Rick has planned an estimated US$28B of new projects worldwide as both client and consultant. As a result of this experience, he has identified and reduced the inefficiencies and lowered the costs of the land planning and urban design process by nearly 50%. In many cases, Rick’s projects have become the catalyst for civic revitalization and new job creation.
Rick has a Masters in Landscape Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He is a Council Member of the Urban Land Institute and a member of the Milken Institute.
What is the origin of your innovation? Tell the Changemakers and media communities what prompted you to start this initiative.
When compiling our OLP Business Plan, we initially focused on the United States and discovered 68% of the 34,000 regional and land planners in the United States work for the government or in private practice near large metropolitan areas. Conversely, of the 2.3 billion acres of land in the United States, 60% is privately held and only 12% of that is in non-agricultural uses – meaning hundreds of millions of acres need a sustainable and authentic development strategy. In fact, much of that land may never be touched.
Upon launching Online Land Planning, the response we got was not only national, but global - with immediate inquiries from Slovenia, Ukraine, Australia, Korea and the UAE.
Within 10 months, we won top honors in Startup Nation's international competition (sponsored by Microsoft and FedEx) as one of the 'Most Innovative' businesses for 2008.
Therefore, the origin of our innovation stems around the fact that many property owners wo have geotourism opportunities are often remote from urban areas and have limited access, financing and experience to obtain professional land planning services and advice. But most do have a computer and internet capabilities. We have optimized the internet to make ourselves available to them as soon as they begin researching how to develop their land.
The core team has worked together successfully for many years and our results are proven. Project examples and more information about the OLP planning process and projects we are working on can be found on our website at http://www.onlinelandplanning.com
Describe some unique tourist experiences that your approach provides. Be specific; give illustrative examples.
One unique tourist experience where we applied our profession expertise was on a cultural project at the Yi Ling Cave, located in the Guangxi Autonomous Region of Southern China. Yi Ling Cave is a famous roadside attraction near Nanning, situated alongside a tourism road which connects the cities of Guilin and Beihai. The property owner felt "his cave needed to be updated”. It seems that most Chinese people have been inside caves and this was no longer a special experience.
The property owner had recently visited Disneyland in the United States and decided that he wanted a roller coaster ride inside the cave, similar to Space Mountain, which he enjoyed at the theme park. Upon our arrival, it was explained to him that this was probably not realistic since the ride at Disneyland was a man-made creation, made of lathe and plaster - while his cave was the real thing. Dynamiting holes into the cave walls, incredible amounts of excavation, the ride’s vibration and mechnaical systems and safety concerns about a potential collapse created an unrealistic scenario and an environmential disaster.
Instead, we spent the next three days on site developing alternative, sustainable land planning solutions that would increase tourism and also respected the land, the local culture as well as the authencity and beauty of the region.
The lessons learned are that without our professional expertise, reputation, and cultural sensitivity, a wonderful natural landmark would have been destroyed and lives possibly endangered. By understanding to the owner’s needs for increasing tourism, creating jobs and a micro economy, we were able to strategize a land plan for an authentic guest experience that local officials and international tourists could embrace.
What types of partnerships or professional development would be most beneficial in spreading your innovation?
We are interested in the proposed new co-financing opportunity for geotourism and sustainable development projects in Latin America and the Caribbean described as part of the MIF Sustainable Tourism Cluster. We believe that all projects that are to be considered under this program should include a land planning concept booklet in order to assess one project from another to help make final determinations for funding. We propose to create a
custom land planning and economic feasibilty template for these assignments.
We would like to have the support of National Georgraphic, BID, MIF, Urban Land Institute, American Planning Association, Tourism ROI to get the word out that applications are available for funding and that a recommended prerequisite to be used in the process would include a land planning concept booklet prepared by us to clarify the geotourism opportunity and the potential for development (or non-development).
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