When we started digitizing zoning ordinances four years ago, the strategy was to start with the US's largest and most powerful metropolis. Our COO, Jeffrey Millett, created an algorithm to determine the top 100 cities with the most development capacity.

Why is digitizing zoning ordinances so hard?

We soon realized that although we had a great strategy on the order of cities, not every city provides the required information. Moreover, some of the fastest-growing cities had extremely complicated zoning ordinances. Phoenix, Boston, and Washington DC were some of the cities we skipped due to the complexities within the code.

We needed a few wins first for a young team starting to digitize and automate this arduous process.

Did COVID increase the demand for digitizing MSAs?

COVID had an unprecedented impact on urban development. By the end of 2020, nobody wanted to live in buildings. Confronting a potentially infected human being in the elevator was frightening.

People began to migrate away from the city centers, and shortly after, our customers began to request entire MSAs. We got to work right away.

Why digitize zoning ordinances in Dallas-Forth Worth first?

Two MSAs were in most demand, Dallas-Fort Worth and Tampa, Florida. These cities make sense because Texas and Florida benefited from the most significant migration influxes.

We are digitizing both and investing in further zoning digitization automation to maintain thousands of cities simultaneously.

More will be revealed,

Olivia

If you’d like to learn when we launch more cities, follow Deepblocks on LinkedIn to stay updated whenever we release a new article.

Olivia Ramos is the CEO of Deepblocks, an AI-powered software that automates the site selection process for developers and investors. 

See how quickly you can find your next development site here (our record is 3 minutes).