I used to work at a startup building AI-assisted planning tools for infrastructure assets like power lines (https://www.continuum.industries/), and we built a similar internal tool for extracting relevant coordinates and geographic features from images embedded in PDFs - even in this day and age, a lot of important information gets shipped that way. I'm pretty sure it also made use of Segment Anything, which is a genuine marvel - it's always good to remember that "AI" does not just mean "LLMs"!
The concern is of tools like this remove the incentive to cut down on the ask of applicants, as AI can process longer applications more easily. In turn applicants will use AI to complete, and all this paperwork will add what value? Also, the other risk is that councils use it to cut planning officers, rather than planning turnaround times.
Presumably those making applications on behalf of property owners will also be using these tools, so we will potentially end up with machines talking to machines.
I have noticed that in the rural area of Wales where I live, the majority of applications for both new build and alterations are supported by the same “agent”. I would be interested in some analysis of this part of the process.
Faster approvals matter more than they sound: planning permission is the actual throttle on housing supply, so anything that clears the queue moves the needle more than the levers that get all the airtime. The unglamorous fix usually is the fix.
I used to work at a startup building AI-assisted planning tools for infrastructure assets like power lines (https://www.continuum.industries/), and we built a similar internal tool for extracting relevant coordinates and geographic features from images embedded in PDFs - even in this day and age, a lot of important information gets shipped that way. I'm pretty sure it also made use of Segment Anything, which is a genuine marvel - it's always good to remember that "AI" does not just mean "LLMs"!
The concern is of tools like this remove the incentive to cut down on the ask of applicants, as AI can process longer applications more easily. In turn applicants will use AI to complete, and all this paperwork will add what value? Also, the other risk is that councils use it to cut planning officers, rather than planning turnaround times.
Presumably those making applications on behalf of property owners will also be using these tools, so we will potentially end up with machines talking to machines.
I have noticed that in the rural area of Wales where I live, the majority of applications for both new build and alterations are supported by the same “agent”. I would be interested in some analysis of this part of the process.
I'm sure the people making planning applications are *already* using AI!
Faster approvals matter more than they sound: planning permission is the actual throttle on housing supply, so anything that clears the queue moves the needle more than the levers that get all the airtime. The unglamorous fix usually is the fix.
Call me dumb or call me blind but I really could not see any houses in that picture of a dog.