Computerized Approach to Residential Land Analysis, known as CARLA, was a proprietary software program developed by the architectural firm Willis & Associates of San Francisco, California, in 1971.
Reynolds, Smith & Hills, a firm in Jacksonville, Florida, produced managing software designed to organize an array of financials that could help identify a successful development investment strategy.
CARLA was able to produce in a twenty-day period what by traditional methods and analyses would achieve in four to six months, allowing land development and construction to take place more rapidly.
The computer graphic information reports were represented either in the form of topographical site perspectives, contour maps or as a sequence of numeric values organized within a template matrix that allowed the architect to identify the optimal relationships and planning concept.
[4] In 1974, Willis & Associates, Inc., was awarded an architectural and engineering contract for the design and plan of the Aliamanu Valley Community for Military Housing in Honolulu, Hawaii.