We believe good planning requires the fluency of the full spectrum of planning.

About Union Point Consulting

Union Point Consulting is an urban planning and regulatory consulting firm providing comprehensive planning, zoning code modernization, urban design, housing policy, and climate resilience services to municipalities, public agencies, and communities across the country. The firm was founded in 2026 by practitioners who built their expertise inside public agencies, leading the development of general plans, zoning code reforms, community plans, and environmental review processes. That discipline reflects the environments in which Union Point developed as a team, within a large, complex, highly litigated planning jurisdiction where defensibility, clarity, and implementability were not aspirational qualities but daily requirements.

What distinguishes our practice is the integration of policy and regulatory thinking at every stage of work. Union Point's defining capabilities is our policy-to-regulation pipeline. We have the capacity to work across every layer of the regulatory stack, from the high-level policy goals of a general plan through the community plan frameworks that translate them to the zoning ordinance language that makes them actionable, down to the counter where permit applications are reviewed and the questions of implementation become concrete and immediate. Our team brings a developer and architect lens where policies will be evaluated not only for whether it produces good physical outcomes, but whether it is achievable given the market conditions, site economics, and development types that are realistically expected on each street and in each district.

Most consulting practices are strong at the policy end of that pipeline and weak at the implementation end. The result is plans with eloquent goals that produce no discernible change in development outcomes because no one has traced the chain from aspiration to code to permit. Union Point brings that end-to-end fluency to every engagement we undertake. We do not write a policy goal without simultaneously understanding what zoning mechanism would implement it. We do not recommend a development standard without testing it against what a developer will actually build in response to it. We do not draft code language without working through how a permit technician will apply it and how an applicant will respond.

We never approach a planning policy without asking how it will be implemented, what permit pathway it creates, how a planner at the counter will apply it, whether a developer can build it, and whether it will hold up under legal challenge.

• Meet the Team

At Union Point, our work begins with a rigorous analysis of local conditions rather than the adaptation of generic standards. Before drafting a rule or policy, we build an evidence-based picture of how a place actually functions at the parcel level. That methodology of "context-first" drives the differentiation of site-specific standards, even where broader form-based frameworks can apply more widely. In order to produce regulation that is legible to residents, workable for staff, responsive to market conditions, and defensible under state law, our process moves through three stages: read, define, calibrate.

• Learn Our Approach