Planning & zoning for local government

A quieter counter.
More time to plan.

Vantage answers the applicant: the map and parcel record are open to anyone, and the people your department approves get a zoning answer cited to your own ordinance. Planalyze runs the department: your staff write the answers, an approver publishes them, and the assistant says nothing they did not sign.

No login to browse Cited to your ordinance Approved by your planners Built to WCAG 2.1 AA
Accessibility

A public service has to work for the whole public.

WCAG 2.1 AA

Our build target for every page. Swept with axe-core — the engine your consultant will run.

ADA Title II

The rule that puts a web standard on your department, not only on your vendor. We build to it and say in writing where a page falls short.

Accessibility commitment

What the rule asks, what we have built to it, and where we are still working. Partial stays partial, never rounded up.

Read the commitment

Request a VPAT

Our conformance report follows VPAT® 2.5, criterion by criterion. Ask, and the current version ships with your RFP response.

Request the VPAT
Products

Two products. One record.

Vantage

For residents, contractors, architects and agents.

Anyone can open the map and the parcel record. The assistant answers a plain-English zoning question, cited to your ordinance, for the people your department approves.

What Vantage does
Planalyze

For planning staff and their subject-matter experts.

Where the department writes down what it knows. Staff write the answers, an approver publishes them, and every change carries a name and a time.

What Planalyze does
Property lineProperty lineHeightSide yardSide yard
A taller building needs a wider side yard. The assistant says so before a plan is drawn.
Application assistant

Sees your plans. Reasons in 3D.

An address or a parcel number, and what they want to build. The answer is about that parcel.

  • “Do I need to do anything if I want to open a hair and beard salon in my garage?”
  • “I want to open my bakery downstairs and my apartment upstairs. Can I do that?”
  • “I own a 7,000 sq ft R-2 lot. Can I build a duplex by right?”

It also gets right what catches a busy counter out: a caretaker’s mobile home, a landfill under the airport overlay, a building permit inside city limits.

  • Answered on the parcel, not the zone, and every figure is cited to the subsection where the ordinance has one, and to the chapter where it does not.
  • It says what it cannot say. Where the ordinance is silent, it names the determination to ask Planning for instead of inventing a rule.
  • Saved for review, not filed. A finished application waits for your staff with its completeness check attached.
What you get

Three reasons departments say yes.

2 weeks

to production set-up

Your map layers, ordinance and branding, running. Nothing to install, nothing to migrate — the figure covers our own technical set-up, not your procurement and legal review.

24 / 7

The counter never closes

Evenings and weekends, anyone can open the parcel record — and a resident or contractor your department has approved gets the same cited answer the counter would give.

Every figure

Checked against the section it came from

Setbacks, heights and lot sizes are checked against your ordinance as the answer arrives, and a figure that disagrees is flagged with the verified value. The citation opens the section itself where your jurisdiction publishes its code section by section, and the chapter on Municode or codepublishing.

Big enough to transform, small enough to deliver a specialized solution.

Each jurisdiction gets its own map layers, ordinance, branding and approved answers on one shared system. A fix for one is a fix for all; a rule for one is a rule for one.

One shared systemRural townSuburban cityUrban city
Who built it

Central Valley native.

Built by applicants, construction engineers, municipal planners, and pioneering GIS software developers — people who have stood on both sides of the counter in this valley.

Two minutes on one parcel in a California county: a plain-English question, an answer cited to the ordinance, and the contract on the land caught before anyone builds.

More cities and counties are onboarding. We will name them on a call, not list logos we have not earned.

Colleagues gathered around a laptop in an office, working through what is on the screen together.
Half an hour, on your jurisdiction's own records.
Book a demo

Bring OpenCivic to your jurisdiction.

Name a jurisdiction and we walk your team through it on your own records — the map, an application, a plan check. Half an hour, no slides.