A field guide · Vol. 01
What the app
actually does.
A friendlier front end for public property and development data across Harrisonburg and Rockingham County. No editorial spin, no manual entry — when the city or county updates its records, What The Lot updates with it.
The short version
Every parcel in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County. Every zoning designation. Every project working its way through site plan review — laid out like a magazine, not a spreadsheet.
If you’re a neighbor wondering what the fence around that lot means, a small builder trying to keep an eye on rezonings, or a reporter looking for the next story in the city or county, this is a place to look first.
How it works
Three moving partsStep 01
Pull from public GIS
On a schedule, What The Lot fetches the public feeds the City of Harrisonburg and Rockingham County already publish — parcels, zoning, and the active projects list from Community Development.
Step 02
Make it readable
Records get cleaned, geocoded, cross-linked, and rendered as a live map, a project archive, and a plain-English activity feed. Statuses change, and so does the page.
Step 03
Watch what you care about
Save a parcel or a project to your watchlist. When the status shifts or a new document lands, you find out — no need to keep refreshing city or county portals.
What you’ll see
Four surfacesLive map
See the city and county
Every active project and every parcel on one canvas. Filter by status, zoning, or project type. Click any pin to open its dossier.
Open the mapProject dossiers
One page per development
Address, status, project type, residential units on the plan, linked parcels, and a running timeline of when things changed.
Browse recent projectsWatchlists
Follow a parcel or a project
Star anything you want to track. Your watchlist becomes a personal feed of status changes across the city and county — quiet until something moves.
Start a watchlistData sources
Every field is traceable
Every dataset What The Lot relies on is listed, with the last successful sync time. If a number here looks wrong, you can go straight to the source.
See the sourcesWho it’s for
Anyone who wants to know what’s changing.
Neighbors
Understand the project going up two blocks over — what stage it’s at, and what it’s zoned for.
Small developers
Watch parcels come available, track rezonings, and see how similar projects moved through review.
Journalists
Spot the next story. Every status change is a lead; every dossier links back to the source record.
City nerds
Read Harrisonburg and Rockingham County like a newspaper — the boring, load-bearing kind that pays attention to what gets built.
A few principles
What we won’t doi.
Public data stays public
Everything here comes from records the city already publishes. What The Lot just makes it easier to read.
ii.
No manual editorializing
Statuses and details come from the source. If it changes in the GIS, it changes here — no in-between opinion.
iii.
Traceable by design
Every screen links back to the dataset it draws from, with the last sync time. Trust, but verify.
Where to start
Open the map.
Follow one thing.
The fastest way to understand What The Lot is to pick a corner of Harrisonburg or Rockingham County you already know and see what’s pending there. Then watch it.