Permits vs. Progress: Finding the Sweet Spot Between Regulation and Growth

Permitting ensures a city’s standards are met

Zoning and building codes provide standards and expectations for how a city wants to grow. They also ensure the safety and health of citizens, visitors and the surrounding environment. Permits enforce these requirements and provide alignment between cities and construction on what is being built.

But permits can also create strain when meeting growth and electrification goals

Permits require review, have large rejection rates and create delays for projects that both developers and cities want to push forward.

The Brooking Institute released a list of facts regarding permitting, and found that they are often a large hindrance to growth.

“There are significant permitting issues that inhibit project completion - but they are typically at the state and local levels.”

In fact, they showed that zoning and local ordinances are the leading reason for project cancellations for wind and solar projects. Additional research shows that over 11% of US Annual Construction spend goes specifically toward code compliance issues.

Case Study

Fordje spoke to one city, for example, who is eager to go further in supporting it’s community with electrification. Their local utility approached them about connecting Electric Vehicle Chargers to lamp posts. While the City Planners would love to enact this quickly, there is no clear code for them to adapt. Most City Planners look to the success of other cities and implement what has worked elsewhere. But at the edge of innovation, they have no such assurances, and a mistake can be costly. In this case, the city will wait for months or even years to see what other cities do before moving forward rather than risk an unknown problem.

Fewer regulations only work with elevated understanding

In response to this need for speedier permits, some cities are simplifying their regulations, hoping that fewer requirements will allow faster growth.

Common misconception is that speed to growth can occur by eliminating zoning and codes. As described in the Bloomberg CityLab article Unlocking the Hidden Power of Zoning, for Good or Bad:

“Simply changing the number of units for that may be built on a lot is not enough to ensure housing can be built…each lot in a zoned city is subject to a variety of other rules, including minimum lot sizes, setback requirements, building height caps, maximum number of units and parking requirements. These zoning rules often do more to constrain housing than people realize.”

And changes have to be understood to be helpful. Fordje has consistently heard that updates to city codes are hard to determine, for both construction developers and city planners. If developers don’t have the correct codes, development will still get halted at permits and inspections.

Options are on the horizon

With national recognition of the permitting issue, the White House as well as many states are focusing on how to make permitting faster. A few options are emerging:

• Permitting software: An increased effort toward automating permitting, both from a construction and a municipal perspective, has emerged. Software, such as PermitFlow, is being developed to aid this speed. Additionally the SolarApp platform was developed to allow for automatically approved solar permit applications that meet the requirements of participating local governments.
• City Code Clarification: A permit is, in the end, only as good as the data being used. Fordje is here to do just that - clarify and point to the correct codes so permits can be submitted with the correct information the first time.

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