🏗️ Zoning & Planning Commission Tracker

Monitor city planning commissions, zoning boards, and land use committees across hundreds of US cities using the Legistar platform. Extract upcoming meetings, agenda items, zoning matters (rezoning, variances, subdivisions), and vote histories — all from public government APIs.

What This Actor Does

Need	What You Get
Upcoming zoning hearings	Meeting dates, times, locations, agenda PDFs, and video links
Agenda items	What's being discussed — rezoning, conditional use, variances, site plans, subdivisions
Legislative matters	Full matter text with status, dates, requesting department, and matter history
Vote & action tracking	Committee referrals, recommendations, approvals/denials with dates
Multi-city coverage	One actor, hundreds of cities — add or remove city slugs as needed

Why This Matters

For developers, CRE brokers, land use attorneys, and site selection consultants, zoning changes are the earliest possible signal of development opportunity. A rezoning approved today means a project breaks ground in 6-18 months. This actor lets you track that signal across dozens of cities simultaneously.

How It Works

This actor queries the Legistar Web API — an open, no-authentication REST API used by hundreds of US cities (Baltimore, Denver, Oakland, Seattle, Phoenix, Nashville, Charlotte, San Jose, and many more). It:

1. Discovers which city bodies handle zoning/planning/land use
2. Pulls upcoming and recent meetings for those bodies
3. Extracts agenda items from each meeting
4. Searches for zoning-related legislative matters filed in your date window
5. Retrieves matter histories (votes, referrals, committee actions)

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
cities	string	baltimore,denver,oakland,seattle	Comma-separated Legistar city slugs
daysBack	integer	90	Days in the past to search
daysForward	integer	60	Days in the future to search
maxMattersPerCity	integer	500	Max zoning matters per city
maxConcurrency	integer	3	Cities processed simultaneously

Finding City Slugs

City slugs are the identifiers used in Legistar URLs. To find a city's slug, visit their legislative portal — the slug is the subdomain or path segment. Examples:

• Baltimore: baltimore (baltimore.legistar.com)
• Denver: denver (denver.legistar.com)
• Oakland: oakland (oakland.legistar.com)
• Seattle: seattle (seattle.legistar.com)
• Phoenix: phoenix (phoenix.legistar.com)

You can test a city by visiting: https://webapi.legistar.com/v1/{slug}/Bodies

Output Schema

Records are typed by record_type:

meeting — Planning/zoning body meetings

• event_id, body, date, time, location
• agenda_status, minutes_status
• agenda_url (PDF), minutes_url (PDF), url (web page)
• video_status, comment

agenda_item — Individual agenda items

• event_item_id, event_id, matter_id, matter_file
• title (full description), agenda_sequence
• action, action_date, passed_flag
• agenda_note, minutes_note, video_url

matter — Zoning-related legislative matters

• matter_id, matter_file, title, type, status, body
• intro_date, passed_date, enactment_date, enactment_number
• requester, agenda_date, url

matter_history — Actions taken on matters

• matter_id, history_id, action, action_body, action_date
• passed_flag, agenda_note, minutes_note

Example Input

{
  "cities": "baltimore,denver,oakland,seattle,phoenix",
  "daysBack": 90,
  "daysForward": 60,
  "maxMattersPerCity": 200,
  "maxConcurrency": 3
}

Use Cases

• CRE Developers: Track rezoning proposals before they're public news
• Land Use Attorneys: Monitor variance and conditional use applications
• Site Selection Consultants: Compare development pipeline activity across cities
• Real Estate Investors: Identify neighborhoods with active zoning changes
• Journalists & Researchers: Track land use policy trends across municipalities
• Government Affairs: Monitor planning commission agendas for relevant items

Pricing

Pay per result. See the pricing tab for current rates.

Notes

• All data comes from public government APIs — no login or authentication required
• Legistar is used by 400+ US cities; not all have the Web API enabled
• Some cities use different platforms (Granicus, Municode, custom). Support for additional platforms planned in future versions
• The actor filters for zoning/planning/land-use-related bodies and matters automatically
• Matter history is fetched for zoning-related matters only (up to 10 history entries per matter)

Support

For issues, feature requests, or help finding city slugs, open an issue on the Actor's page or contact the developer.