California cities turn to AI to streamline permitting

Two California cities announced within days of each other they are turning to two different artificial intelligence-driven tools to streamline and speed up their building permit applications and processing.

Lancaster, a city of just over 170,000 people near Los Angeles, announced last week it has partnered with AI regulatory tech company Labrynth to prescreen, validate and optimize permit applications before they are submitted. The city and company said that means fewer errors, less back-and-forth between an applicant and the government, and approval times reduced from months to days.

Separately, San Jose announced its own effort to use AI to streamline permitting accessory dwelling units with what it calls a “pre-check” feature to flag missing or incomplete information before building plans are submitted. Initially, the city said it has turned to AI permit software CivCheck for this pilot program, and may turn to others in the future as the effort expands.

“It’s time to bring permitting into the 21st century,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said in a statement. “Our residents and our city planners need to be able to move faster and build better.”

California’s building and housing codes, as well as its permitting and regulatory landscape, are “notoriously complex,” Lancaster Mayor Rex Parris said in an email. That can be frustrating for permit applicants, who may struggle to get approvals for new buildings or additions due to the complexity of the applications they must fill out, and see their approvals take months or even years. The latter is especially troubling given the state’s housing crisis.

AI can help make some of that easier, however. Labrynth CEO Stuart Lacey said in an interview that deterministic AI can be trained very carefully with rules, rights, precedent and regulations. 

“We can consume thousands of pages of information in minutes, and the model can learn probably better than a human could ever recall all those requirements,” Lacey said.

That then eases the administrative burden on staff in both cities, as well as developers looking to get projects off the ground. Chris Burton, director of San Jose’s Planning, Building and Code Enforcement Department, said in a statement the city is “dedicated to taking any guesswork out of the permitting process, helping builders and residents move quickly with clarity and confidence.”

But that does not mean that humans will be cut out of the permitting process entirely, as some have worried following the onset of agentic AI. But Parris said keeping the human in the loop is “foundational.”

“It’s not about automating decision-making,” he said. “It’s about augmenting better decisions, faster. Our city staff still sign off on every permit. But instead of spending hours flagging incomplete applications, they get structured submissions that are AI-assisted and city-tuned. We’re not replacing planners. We’re giving them a better starting point and a smarter toolkit. Lancaster believes AI means Augmented Intelligence not Artificial Intelligence.”

Lacey said he anticipates Labrynth to have the “lightest possible touch integration,” and be a “bridge” between a city’s application process and the applicant. As the technology knows what to look for in a successful application and where the gaps are, it will make it easier to have applicants go back and make amendments, then have the city validate their work.

“Effectively it means that someone before applying would go through the Labrynth application, the outcome of that is a higher, pre-validated, scored, ideal application. When the city gets it, and it's got a Labrynth logo in it, they're going to have the validation report and they're going to know that it meets almost every one of their requirements, which means they can now move it straight through processing, review, oversight and a risk-graded, great process.”

Both cities anticipate their partnerships expanding as they look to further utilize AI for permitting. If this pilot is successful, San Jose said its customer readiness AI tool could be extended to permitting for single-family homes in the future. That would be especially useful in the wake of the kinds of wildfires that have ravaged California in recent years. Parris said he expects a similar expansion in time.

“We’re starting with permitting because it’s a pressure point,” he said. “Often the difference between success and failure is the time it takes to get permitted. And we see this expanding into zoning workflows, CEQA documentation, housing development pipelines; anywhere California’s regulatory complexity slows down good projects. This could serve as a model for regional collaboration where cities and counties share best practices through a unified framework, not siloed systems.”

Other cities in California may be tempted to follow suit, and Parris said they should not wait to do so.

“Treat permitting not just as paperwork but as a civic experience,” he said. “The frustration people feel with delays and opacity doesn’t just cost time. It erodes trust. California cities are being asked to do more with less, under intense scrutiny. My advice? Don’t wait for Sacramento to fix it. Partner locally, deploy ethically, and show your community that you’re serious about solving real problems with real tools. Lancaster didn’t wait and we’re already seeing what’s possible.”