State & Local Government Policy, Business and Technology

Zoning codes are confusing and controversial, but this startup says it can help

StateScoop: City governments and residents alike typically struggle to understand zoning codes, the rules that dictate where and how things should be built. A new company called Gridics says that by providing builders and city officials with detailed visualizations of how the codes apply to specific sites, it can eliminate confusion and advance local discussions on how best to reform them.

The goal, according to the company's top executive is for local governments to regain ownership of discussions that frequently become lengthy, controversial and expensive when there is any talk of changing the existing code, but also to lend transparency to a set of rules that for most members of the public is obfuscated by its bulk. Instead of sorting through hundreds of pages of code to piece together how the applicable rules fit together for a given property, the software, called Zonar, shows how the rules fit together.

Read article