Agentic Urban Planning Assistant: A Parametric Approach to Spatial and Regulatory Evaluation in Urban Planning

Urban planning decision support often requires a joint interpretation of legal rules, parcel geometry, zoning parameters, street context, and proposal-specific constraints. Generic retrieval-augmented generation is insufficient for this setting since many answers depend on structured spatial evidence and deterministic regulatory calculations rather than on retrieved prose alone. This paper presents an agentic urban planning assistant designed for parcel-level first-pass analysis. It combines deterministic request classification, route-specific retrieval, parcel lookup, exact-index zoning-parameter resolution, parcel-side normalization, setback-rule assignment, gated planning calculations, and final large-language-model (LLM) answer synthesis. The implementation uses the LLM mainly for the final answer generation stage, while the evidence and reasoning foundation is constructed through structured data preparation and deterministic workflow logic. An evaluation framework is developed that aligns benchmark design and metric selection with the actual assistant’s route structure. It combines deterministic checks, complementary LLM-as-a-judge metrics, benchmark generation from reviewed seed cases, and execution-level observability. A reviewed 40-case architecture-aware benchmark for the Sofia/Bulgarian case study is prepared. On this benchmark, the deterministic pass rate reached 1.00, while the complementary judge-based scoring yielded a faithfulness value of 0.931 under a revised structured-evidence evaluation setup. The remaining weaknesses are concentrated in proposal-feasibility synthesis and parcel-zoning descriptive completeness.

Authors

Institutions

Publication Details

Journal
˜The œinternational archives of the photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciences/International archives of the photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciences
Published
2026-09-29
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-l-4-w3-2026-59-2026
Primary Topic
Geographic Information Systems Studies
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00
Controls
|||
ALL TIME
JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEP
article

Agentic Urban Planning Assistant: A Parametric Approach to Spatial and Regulatory Evaluation in Urban Planning

Emil Hristov, Denis Dimitrov, Dessislava Petrova‐Antonova, Angel Spasov
˜The œinternational archives of the photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciences/International archives of the photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciences
Geographic Information Systems Studies
article

Agentic Urban Planning Assistant: A Parametric Approach to Spatial and Regulatory Evaluation in Urban Planning

Emil Hristov, Denis Dimitrov, Dessislava Petrova‐Antonova, Angel Spasov
article en

Abstract

Urban planning decision support often requires a joint interpretation of legal rules, parcel geometry, zoning parameters, street context, and proposal-specific constraints. Generic retrieval-augmented generation is insufficient for this setting since many answers depend on structured spatial evidence and deterministic regulatory calculations rather than on retrieved prose alone. This paper presents an agentic urban planning assistant designed for parcel-level first-pass analysis. It combines deterministic request classification, route-specific retrieval, parcel lookup, exact-index zoning-parameter resolution, parcel-side normalization, setback-rule assignment, gated planning calculations, and final large-language-model (LLM) answer synthesis. The implementation uses the LLM mainly for the final answer generation stage, while the evidence and reasoning foundation is constructed through structured data preparation and deterministic workflow logic. An evaluation framework is developed that aligns benchmark design and metric selection with the actual assistant’s route structure. It combines deterministic checks, complementary LLM-as-a-judge metrics, benchmark generation from reviewed seed cases, and execution-level observability. A reviewed 40-case architecture-aware benchmark for the Sofia/Bulgarian case study is prepared. On this benchmark, the deterministic pass rate reached 1.00, while the complementary judge-based scoring yielded a faithfulness value of 0.931 under a revised structured-evidence evaluation setup. The remaining weaknesses are concentrated in proposal-feasibility synthesis and parcel-zoning descriptive completeness.

˜The œinternational archives of the photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciences/International archives of the photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciencesVol. L-4/W3-2026(0)
Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" (BG)
Sustainable cities and communities
Openalex Percentile: Top 4%
Geographic Information Systems Studies
AI Navigator

Ask Laika to Summarize, Analyze, and Connect papers live on the map.

Summarize Papers & Methodologies

Extract key findings, datasets, and comparative methods across publications.

Benchmark Rankings & Visual Analytics

Rank top research institutions, authors, funders, topics, and journals by Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) and paper volume with instant charts.

Connect Distant Disciplines

Bridge topological clusters on the map to find hidden collaborative intersections.