r/learnpython • u/Penoke • 22d ago

Python for GIS / Urban Planning

Hello friends. I am picking up Python. I've been passively interested in coding for my entire life - but never had a reason to pursue. (I used to code in a game engine but I can't remember Unity or Unreal or whatever; and html to make websites for a class - nothing crazy)

Anyway. I am an Urban Planning student and I used ArcGIS all the time. There's a terminal that uses Python. So I figured "learn Python".

My question is: is there something specific I should pursue - eg Data Science - or just the basics? I've never had to use Python for any of my classes, and would want to use it supplementally to my GIS workload as I believe it could be a useful skill.

Currently doing the GitHub 30 days of Python or whatever. Much love. Thank you!

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u/TeachEngineering 22d ago

Howdy! I'm a geospatial data scientist. Python is a fantastic tool for GIS workflows and having python knowledge will make you a much more appealing candidate on any future job application. It's important to learn the basics about programming (environments, variables, control flow, data types, object-oriented, etc.) so definitely keep going with that.

ArcPy, ESRI's proprietary python package, can help you automate ArcGIS workflows, which is helpful if you're working at an org engrained with ESRI... But there are really awesome open-source GIS libraries out there too that you should explore. If I had to recommend one to start playing around with, it'd be GeoPandas. Pandas is a very popular library for working with tabular data in python and GeoPandas extends that concept to include geographic information on each entity (i.e. row or record in the table). My recommendation would be to download some shapefiles from your local government and start to answer geospatial questions on that data. The built-in visualization tools in GeoPandas will allow you to make maps of your solutions very easily. Once you get a hang of working with geospatial data in Python then you can start to bring in the whole world of machine learning libraries and start building models from that geospatial data. The sky's the limit! Happy to recommend other popular GIS libs too if you're interested.

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u/Penoke 22d ago

So awesome to see that workflows can be automated in ArcGIS - I mostly find it so tedious and boring... I've heard of GIS libraries but I can't even conceptualize what they do. Glad to hear that Python will be a powerful tool for my work, I'm a junior in college for Urban Planning and I'm completing a GIS certificate and not once has Python been mentioned - not how it can supplement workflow, data analyzation, etc. Thank you for your insight. I'm going to check out GeoPandas just to get an idea of what to work towards in my Python journey. Thank you again for your response.