How planning departments are improving public service without adding a single position. You already know the calls. The basic questions. The hard-to-find documents. The back and forth.  Someone wants to know if they can build an ADU on their property. Someone else is asking whether their lot is in a flood overlay zone. A contractor needs to confirm setback requirements before they can finish a bid. The opportunistic developer is certain that a specific bonus applies to a prop

Oregon's housing legislation has been moving at quite the clip. In the past few years, state lawmakers have passed a steady stream of housing bills, each one designed to address supply shortfalls, remove barriers to development, or override local restrictions that were slowing things down. For planners responsible for implementing these laws, and developers trying to build within them, the cumulative effect is a regulatory environment of mounting complexity. Every new bill ad

Planning departments across the country are navigating a quiet but profound shift. It is often described in shorthand as the “Succession Gap”, the "Silver Tsunami", or “The Great Handoff”: a wave of transitions or retirements among experienced planners who have spent decades building institutional knowledge, local context, and professional judgment that cannot be easily replaced. But the real issue is not simply that people are transitioning or retiring. It is how certainty

A Comprehensive Evaluation of Regional Zoning Digitization and the UrbanForm Implementation The landscape of municipal governance and land-use planning within the State of Oregon has historically been characterized by a high degree of regulatory complexity, rooted in a robust system of statewide planning goals and localized development codes. For decades, the friction inherent in navigating these regulations has served as a silent "information tax" on development, disproporti