San Francisco Resets the Bar with New Online Approvals Database

The online documentation of the San Francisco Planning Department's approval process received a huge upgrade.

1 minute read

March 10, 2015, 9:00 AM PDT

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell


"The San Francisco-based startup Buildingeye just went live with the initial version of a map that shows all the projects in the Planning approval process going back to 2009," reports Lamar Anderson.

Anderson adds: "[The Planning Department] also enlisted Buildingeye to create a separate map specifically for CEQA, and there's another one planned for the Department of Building Inspection. (The CEQA map even lets users set up email alerts for particular addresses, because of a recent law mandating an electronic notification system for CEQA.)"

Compared to the system's predecessors and systems that aim to accomplish some of the same goals in other cities around the country, the system is easy to use and seems, at least, to be a much more honest effort to enable community engagement rather than discourage it. In case you need more help, there's even a visual step-by-step guide for how to use the system. Anderson's post also spends a little more time explaining how the system works.

Monday, March 9, 2015 in Curbed SF

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