urban-planning
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The Collaborative Plans the Conversation Before It Plans the Place
A Boston firm found an unusual way to move public projects forward: treat the meeting, the map and the message as one piece of infrastructure.
The Consulting Firm That Turned a Stormwater Tax Into a Day at the Park
Shockey Consulting sells something city halls badly need and cannot manufacture on command: a credible conversation. Its best work begins where the engineering ends and the public questions start.
The Robert Group Makes Public Input Hard to Ignore
Southern California's biggest plans do not move on engineering alone. This 11-person public-affairs firm turns maps, environmental reports and construction schedules into conversations people can actually enter.
Winter goes looking for the people missing from the meeting
A Bay Area consultancy takes transportation planning to farmers markets, classrooms, and neighborhood conversations. Its work makes a practical argument: who gets asked helps determine what gets built.
TestFit
TestFit is a Dallas-based real estate feasibility platform that uses configurator and generative-design algorithms to turn a raw parcel into a buildable site plan, unit mix, parking layout, cost estimate and pro forma in minutes instead of weeks. Founded in 2016 by Clifton Harness and Ryan Griege, it serves developers, architects, contractors, civil engineers and municipalities evaluating multifamily, industrial, retail and mixed-use projects, and has raised $22M including a $20M Series A in 2022.
Tolemi
Tolemi is a Boston-based govtech company whose flagship platform, BuildingBlocks, stitches together scattered municipal data - property records, ownership, code violations, tax liens - into a single map-based interface. State and local governments use it to run spatial analysis, spot problem properties, and make faster, data-driven decisions about housing, land use, and neighborhood revitalization. Formerly OpportunitySpace, the company rebranded to Tolemi after Y Combinator and today serves cities from New York to small towns across the U.S.
Populus
Populus is a San Francisco-based mobility intelligence platform that helps over 100 cities digitize, manage, and monetize their streets, curbs, and shared mobility fleets - from scooters and e-bikes to delivery vans and ride-hail vehicles.
Waypoint Transit
Waypoint Transit is an AI-powered urban planning platform that automates the creation of civil infrastructure studies for city governments and transit agencies. Founded in 2024 by Stanford graduates Varun Tandon and Ryan Johnston, the company replaces months of repetitive consultant work with AI-driven analysis - cutting costs by 70% and timelines from years to months. In a market where U.S. cities spend $50B annually on planning, Waypoint is already working with 10+ municipalities across the country.