I have a land registry shapefile and a dwellings shapefile; how can I show only the land without properties?

[GarethRiley]

I have some limited experience with ArcMap from my BSc course, but I'm unsure how to go about this.

I'm creating a map for a housing trust. I need to show all land under the trust's ownership, which I have from a land registry shapefile. I also need to show all dwellings under the trust's ownership, which I have as a shapefile too.

This is where I'm a little lost; I need to separate the land into parcels that have dwellings and parcels without dwellings. I have achieved the first step using the "spatial join" where the land registry shapefile is the "target feature" and the dwellings shapefile is the "join feature". This creates the layer showing land with dwellings. I don't know how to go about showing land that doesn't have dwellings.For now I've cheated by placing the land with dwellings layer over the original land shapefile layer and changing their symbology but I would like to better distinguish between land with and without dwellings.

Can anyone help?

[AnthonyGiles · Accepted solution]

Gareth,

You could do a select by location where your land intsects with your dwellings:

http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.1/index.html#//00s50000002q000000

Then reverse the selection, this should give you the land without dwellings.

Regards

Anthony

[GarethRiley]

Thanks for that Anthony

I used "select by location" then "switch selection" to select and create a layer from the land parcels without dwellings.I knew there'd be a simple way.