{"id":741982,"date":"2025-04-01T19:59:18","date_gmt":"2025-04-02T02:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=arcnews&p=741982"},"modified":"2025-04-01T16:51:01","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T23:51:01","slug":"gis-based-large-language-model-answers-city-planning-questions","status":"publish","type":"arcnews","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/arcnews\/gis-based-large-language-model-answers-city-planning-questions","title":{"rendered":"GIS-Based Large Language Model Answers City Planning Questions"},"author":5752,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","castos_file_data":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[369852,491742,401],"tags":[164992,339072,491682,491782,413732],"arcnews_issues":[491792],"class_list":["post-741982","arcnews","type-arcnews","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence--ai","category-geoai","category-government","tag-city-government","tag-city-planning","tag-generative-ai","tag-llm","tag-zoning","arcnews_issues-spring-2025","arcnews_sections-your-work"],"acf":{"short_description":"EuclidHL is an AI-powered, community-specific planning and zoning assistant that is always available and interfaces with ArcGIS technology.","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"People, properties, and businesses around the world are affected by city planning and zoning. But planning documents and zoning ordinances can be several hundred pages long. They often contain countless maps, graphics, charts, illustrations, technical diagrams, and reference images. This makes them difficult to use and understand.\r\n\r\nTo help property and business owners navigate planning and zoning information, Esri partner Houseal Lavigne created EuclidHL, an AI-powered planning and zoning assistant that is always available, focuses on accuracy, is community specific, and interfaces with ArcGIS technology. Leveraging GIS, generative AI, and large language models (LLMs), EuclidHL simplifies access to and understanding of a community\u2019s planning and zoning information by answering users\u2019 questions in clear and concise language with supporting graphics and maps."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":741992,"image_position":"right","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"

City Plans and Zoning Ordinances Hold Answers<\/h2>\r\nAll cities, from small towns to large metropolitan areas, want to be vibrant and allow residents and businesses to thrive. To achieve this, cities develop comprehensive plans that establish a vision, along with the goals and strategies needed to see that vision become reality. Throughout the United States and in some other countries, these plans are legally recognized as the city\u2019s official policy document for growth, land use, and development.\r\n\r\nGoing hand in hand with planning is zoning, one of the most powerful implementation tools available to cities. Zoning regulates the use and development of all land, ideally in a manner that is consistent with the city\u2019s plan.\r\n\r\nEvery day, city staff get peppered with questions. \u201cWhat is the city\u2019s approach to affordable housing?\u201d \u201cWhere can I open a restaurant?\u201d \u201cCan I have chickens in my backyard?\u201d \u201cWhat growth areas are targeted for annexation?\u201d \u201cWhat are the city\u2019s sustainability initiatives?\u201d \u201cWhat is the process for getting a mixed-use development approved?\u201d\r\n\r\nThe answers to these questions can be found in the city\u2019s plans and zoning ordinances. This information is important to everyone, from city staff to the public, yet it is difficult to find. It needs to be accessible, accurate, and easily understood."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"

The Challenges of Finding City Information<\/h2>\r\nWhile municipalities post their zoning codes and planning documents online, the sheer size and complexity of these resources is difficult to mine for answers. Voluminous text, charts, and tables\u2014along with countless maps, diagrams, and illustrations\u2014comprise a city\u2019s policies and regulations. Even for trained city staff and officials, finding the right answer to a question is often challenging."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":742002,"image_position":"left","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"What\u2019s more, municipal planning staff are not available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Even during normal business hours, they have other responsibilities, tasks, and projects that demand their attention. But what if someone gets inspired over the weekend to open a business? What if a developer or contractor needs information after hours? What if a city council member is looking into a constituent\u2019s concerns after the evening\u2019s city council meeting? These issues crop up all the time, not just on weekdays between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.\r\n\r\nSo the team at Houseal Lavigne took on a challenge: how to make a city\u2019s planning and zoning information available all the time in a way that is user-friendly, easy to understand, accurate, and community specific\u2014and that fully leverages a city\u2019s commitment to GIS. Essentially, the team wanted to develop a city planning and zoning expert that is always available."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"

GIS as a Central Component of the Solution<\/h2>\r\nEuclidHL is a GIS-enabled, AI-based planning and zoning assistant that answers community-specific questions in easy-to-understand language, graphics, and maps. To create this tool, the team at Houseal Lavigne leveraged its extensive GIS, visualization, and technology expertise, along with the company\u2019s experience working with hundreds of cities across the United Sates on planning and zoning projects. GIS data delivers a clear picture of where the effects of planning and zoning take place, so the team made it a central component of the assistant.\r\n\r\nMembers of the team realized that they could put a city\u2019s planning policies, vision, and priorities together with zoning and development regulations and use that to build the instruction set for an LLM. This would limit the LLM\u2019s responses to the adopted regulations and policies detailed in specific planning and zoning documents."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":742012,"image_position":"right","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"Since planning and zoning text is geospatial in nature, the team also realized that an LLM could use the text from planning and zoning documents to query and access GIS data. The team decided to call this combination of generative AI, planning documents, zoning ordinances, and GIS \u201cEuclidHL\u201d\u2014a nod to the 1926 Supreme Court case, Village of Euclid v. Ambler Reality Co., that legitimized the use of zoning as a tool to regulate land use and development."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"

An Agent-Based LLM Delivers Specific Answers<\/h2>\r\nEuclidHL works by using an agentic framework, an AI system that makes decisions and takes actions on its own. EuclidHL\u2019s agent can adapt its responses to different questions without human oversight. It may request clarification, however, during a dialogue.\r\n\r\nThe agent knows to limit the sources of its information to a specific set of planning and zoning documents, GIS data, maps, 3D scenes, and an engagement platform such as ArcGIS Hub. EuclidHL can also interact with ArcGIS Urban planning projects, enabling it to respond with information about urban development scenarios and zoning capacities. The agent allows the LLM to fetch, reformat, and display information while greatly reducing the likelihood that it will invent, or hallucinate, information when it is uncertain of its response.\r\n\r\nThe agent also employs a series of defensive tools to prevent unsuitable questions or responses. EuclidHL users cannot use the tool to inquire about subjects that are not related to getting a city\u2019s planning or zoning information. Unsuitable questions are politely declined. Moreover, all conversations are logged and can be reviewed by an administrator and flagged for further analysis by Houseal Lavigne staff."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"

How EuclidHL Works<\/h2>\r\nWhen a resident, developer, city leader, or anyone else submits a question to EuclidHL, the question is forwarded to the EuclidHL agent, which determines how to respond. A response can include text and graphics from zoning and planning documents; references to ArcGIS web maps, scenes, and feature layers; and links to supporting documentation such as building permits and variances. Included in the response is a set of instructions. These instructions are passed to ArcGIS API for JavaScript, which renders the maps, scenes, feature layers, and graphics, and displays text within the chat box."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":742022,"image_position":"left","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"EuclidHL is currently in use in Ca\u00f1on City, Colorado, and select other cities in the United States. It provides users with reliable, defensible, and locally specific answers to questions about home additions, fences, acceptable use of property, locations for businesses, municipal plans for growth, plans for new housing, open spaces, annexation, transportation, mobility improvements, and more.\r\n\r\nUsers can ask EuclidHL common questions, such as \u201cCan I raise chickens in my backyard?\u201d or \u201cWhat are the restrictions on building accessory dwelling units (ADUs)?\u201d Whenever EuclidHL answers a question, it responds with a text-based answer and displays supporting GIS data on a map or in a 3D scene.\r\n\r\nIn addition to presenting web maps and scenes that automatically change, pan, and zoom depending on the conversation, EuclidHL will return graphics from legal codes, ordinances, and plans when asked specific planning and zoning inquiries. The graphics include diagrams that help explain required yard setbacks, minimum distances to structures, design guidelines, landscape standards, sign types and requirements, and other property and development regulations."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"

Community Support in the Age of Generative AI<\/h2>\r\nFor a city\u2019s residents, business owners, and civic leaders, generative AI\u2014especially AI assistants\u2014offers an easier way for them to get answers to planning and zoning questions. But the responses must contain more than just text, especially since every planning and zoning inquiry is anchored in geography. EuclidHL fuses text responses with maps, 3D scenes, planning and zoning support documentation, and graphics, providing answers to community members when they need them."},{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Center","content":"To try EuclidHL using Ca\u00f1on City as an example, visit Houseal Lavigne\u2019s beta app<\/a>.","snippet":""}],"references":null},"yoast_head":"\nGIS-Based Large Language Model Answers City Planning Questions | Spring 2025 | ArcNews<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"EuclidHL is an AI-powered, community-specific planning and zoning assistant that is always available and interfaces with ArcGIS technology.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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