City Planning
Plans, codes, and staff capacity for cities, counties, and public agencies.
Cities rarely lack vision. What they lack is the staff time to translate it, and the confidence that what gets adopted will hold up when an application lands at the counter.
Kevin Gardiner ran a city planning department before founding KGA. He has written the policy and then seen it through implementation. He has taken the code amendment to council and then applied it to a project three years later. With nearly 30 years of California experience, KGA writes plans and codes that are legally defensible, administrable by staff, and clear enough for an applicant to follow.
Where we help
General, Specific, and Area Plans. Drafting and updating the documents that set direction, from existing conditions and visioning through adoption and implementation.
Zoning and objective design standards. Code updates that are enforceable, internally consistent, and written to survive SB 330 and Housing Accountability Act scrutiny.
Housing law compliance. Housing Element implementation, and how SB 9, SB 79, SB 330, SB 423, and AB 130 change what a city can and cannot require.
Permit process and review. Diagnosing where applications stall, then redesigning intake, completeness, routing, and review cycles so timelines become predictable.
Staff support and capacity. Advance planning augmentation, peer review, staff reports, development agreements, RFP and RFQ preparation, and grant applications.
Community engagement. Workshops, pop-ups, surveys, stakeholder interviews, and materials that explain a proposal plainly enough to get a useful response.
Who we work with
Cities and counties that need a plan or code updated and do not have the staff hours to do it in house. Planning directors who want a second read on a policy before it goes to council. Agencies facing a state deadline with a document that is not ready.
Why KGA
KGA writes for the people who will be using the document. A plan that reads well but cannot be administered becomes a problem the city inherits for a decade. Having sat in the director's chair, KGA drafts with the counter in mind, knowing that someone will eventually have to say yes or no using these exact words.