Expediting Development: Can Technology Disrupt Permitting and Design?

The United States is in the midst of a housing crisis, driven in part by outdated development and permitting processes that struggle to keep up with demand. Rapid acceleration of technology provides the potential to disrupt and expedite lengthy, complex, and sometimes exclusionary processes like environmental and building permitting.

This session uses New York City, which has one of the more complicated development processes in the county, as an example.

Expediting these processes has been a focus for academics, practitioners, policy makers, and tech startups, with special focus on how to leverage process reforms and technologies for effective change. Explore how various NYC-based startups are leveraging technology to disrupt and accelerate the development process. Presenters delve into how ulama is utilizing digital twin technologies to expedite building code compliance and Alumni Planning is applying lessons learned from experience with NYC’s Department of City Planning to build workflows and AI-based automations to streamline and fast-track the environmental permitting process.

The presentation concludes with a discussion of the feasibility of and roadmap toward achieving a fully automated permitting process in the future—not just in complex cities like New York but across the United States.