As part of our community engagement, IntuArch developed a visual user interface so that stakeholders in the P.I.C.O. Neighborhood Council community could view upcoming proposed developments.
Unfortunately for most residents and stakeholders, the City of Los Angeles does not offer a central online resource for following along with projects. The Planning Department offers the ZIMAS service, but it suffers from an inability for a regular citizen to uncover the details of a project applicant. The Department of Building and Safety is even more opaque, offering no mapping interface at all, and instead a relatively complex permit search system, illegible to citizens.
For P.I.C.O. Neighborhood Council, we reformatted the internal spreadsheets utilized by the Land Use Committee, updated entries with direct links to Planning, LADBS, and project applicants where available. The result is an accessible system for quantifying and identifying what may affect residents.
This apolitical interface is hopeful that knowledge and transparency are the components missing from the current anti-development nature of many communities within Los Angeles. Armed with knowledge of a project, residents and developers can create better neighbors together.
Special thanks to fellow volunteer Rosina Jacobs, a long time Wilshire Vista resident/stakeholder