Every policy has a geographic impact on the people, housing, businesses and infrastructure in our cities. This group contains maps and apps that describe the current state of things, illuminate the opportunity to intervene, show proposed courses of action and track progress toward goals.
Items are categorized two ways: by topic, and by what type of resource the item is (web map, layer, app, dashboard, notebook, video, learn lesson, etc).
Any item that is a layer should be categorized as a "Layer" under the "Ready to Use Maps" category. No other subcategory under "Ready to Use Maps" applies to layers.
Any item that is a web map should be categorized by what level(s) of geography at which it shows a useful map. For example, a web map containing a States layer only would be categorized as "National" under the "Ready to Use Maps" category, because it really is mainly useful for showing a map of the entire country. If desired, it could also be categorized as "Regional" because a user could zoom into a part of the country and how multiple states. It would not be a useful map at "Local" level, so it would not be categorized as a "Local" map.
All of the web maps that use the American Community Survey are categorized as "National" (because they show states), "Regional" (because they also have a Counties layer), and "Local" (because they have a Tracts layer).
The "Browse" page on the Policy Maps site uses these "National", "Regional", "Local" subcategories for web maps only to determine the initial zoom level to use in a Collection. That helps ensure the best user experience when someone views the web maps in a Collection.