Inclusion requires a filing, not a press release.

A project appears on Scope only when a public trace exists, something logged by an official body, independent of the developer's own say-so, that Plat Street can check and cite. A permit application, a TIF or rezoning filing, minutes of an official public body, a council vote, a bond filing, a federal or state grant award. A developer's own press release or town hall does not qualify, however public, unless an official body's minutes independently record it.

Every listing carries one status label, drawn from its strongest trace on file. Labels are earned, never chosen, never purchasable.

Four zones. Four trust levels. Never the same visual language.

Every project page separates what Plat Street verified from what the project team wants to say from what the public thinks, so a reader can tell which zone they are in without reading a label.

Two independent tests. A project only has to clear one.

Test 1: Direct public money or forgone public money. The project itself received, or was excused from, a public obligation. This applies regardless of location, whether inside a district, adjacent, or nowhere near one.

• Private development running on public subsidy: TIF, abatement, tax credits, Chapter 353
• Publicly funded capital projects: streetscapes, plazas, traffic calming, placemaking
• Transit and infrastructure funded in whole or part with public money: highway caps, Complete Streets, streetcar TDDs, state DOT projects with federal or local match
• Parks and public space built in whole or part with public money
• Forgone revenue: abatements, waived fees, diverted tax capture, disclosed per state reporting requirements

Test 2: Inside a Special Tax District, with no subsidy required. A project inside a CID, BID, SSA, DDA, TIF district, TDD, or equivalent is tracked even if it never received a dollar of public money. The district itself is a public body with a board, a budget, and a two-way fiscal relationship to every parcel inside its boundary:

• The district spends on the project's surroundings regardless of whether the project itself was funded: maintenance, security, marketing, streetscaping, capital improvements the board votes on.
• The project's assessed value and sales activity feed the district's revenue base, whether or not that specific property ever took a subsidy.

Test 2 does not include purely federal geographic designations like Opportunity Zones. An OZ is a census-tract tax attribute administered by Treasury and the IRS; no local board budgets for it or collects revenue tied to it. A project inside an OZ is tracked only if it clears Test 1 (took the OZ capital-gains benefit, or received some other public money) or sits inside a Special Tax District that overlaps the OZ tract. OZ membership alone is not a qualifying trace.

Materiality threshold for Test 2. Because district-boundary membership has no discrete filing event, Test 2 requires an independent discovery trigger, such as a building permit above a stated size or cost floor, or a new-construction/major-redevelopment classification, sourced to the permit record. This keeps Scope from tracking every minor renovation permit inside every district footprint.

Out of scope: routine road maintenance or resurfacing with no discrete funding decision, pure private development with no public money and no Special Tax District membership, general agency operating budgets with no capital-project component, and a project's location inside an Opportunity Zone alone.

A project's relationship to a Special Tax District, whether inside, adjacent, or none, is always tracked as a fact, because that relationship is frequently the story on its own. Geometry, not just parcels: a tower gets a parcel, a streetscape gets a corridor segment, a park gets a boundary polygon.

Six bright lines, published, held regardless of monetization.

Free to exist on Scope. Paid only for a better voice once you are there.

Inclusion, the Record, official notices, and community comment are free, always. What is paid is a claimed project's own space to talk, Zone 3, plus tools that live entirely outside the public page.

Outside the public page: engagement export reports, solicitation distribution to Plat Street's supplier/MWBE audience, and bulk data / API access for researchers, investors, and other newsrooms. Proposal-stage sponsored placement is sold separately as a flat, disclosed campaign fee.

Architects, contractors, engineers, suppliers, marketers.

A separate audience from developers: firms that want visibility with the real estate and public-capital audience Scope reaches, but have no claim to any specific project unless they actually worked on it. Money buys visibility; it never buys proximity to a project's record that implies endorsement or work Scope has not verified.

Earned project-team credit

Permits and filings frequently name the architect, general contractor, or engineer of record. Where that is true, Zone 1 carries an unpaid, sourced "Project Team" line, a fact like any other. Any firm named there can claim the credit at no cost.

Firm profile - paid upgrade on top of an earned credit

A firm cannot buy its way onto a project it did not work on. The profile and its paid tier only activate content that already has a sourced credit behind it.

The directory

A separate section, never mixed into project pages. A browsable directory by trade and by metro, functioning like a classifieds or Chamber-of-Commerce listing - recognizably commercial, structurally apart from the record. Firms with no claimed project yet (the prospecting audience, a supplier who wants early visibility, not just credit for past work) can list here directly, priced the same as the Profile/Featured tiers above.

Where the link lives

A reader who clicks a named firm on a project record lands on that firm's own profile page, never a promotional module on the project page itself. The "other firms in this trade" or "other firms near this project" list lives on the profile, one hop from the record, and any sponsored entries in that list are visibly labeled as such, the same disclosure standard as Section 9.4's sponsored placements.

Individuals with license-backed project credits.

A person-level directory, separate from the firm directory. The same rule governs it: a credit is earned from a public record, and money only buys presentation of credits that already exist. A professional cannot buy into a project they did not work on, and a project credit is frozen at the firm the person was with when the record was filed.

Earned project credit

When a permit or filing names an individual architect, engineer, or contractor of record, that person gets a credit on the project. The credit is permanent and stays attached to the firm they were at when the work was recorded, even if they later change jobs. The person can claim the credit for free.

License verification

License verification is free, always. A PE license, AIA membership, or equivalent credential is checked against the issuing body and shown as verified. It cannot be purchased.

Sponsored profile and tools

License verification is free. Sponsored profile and private tools live outside the project record and never rewrite the underlying credit.

Know a project that should be on Scope?

Scope is built from public traces. If you know of a project with a filing, vote, grant, permit, or other official record, send it to us. We will verify it against the source and add it if it meets the two tests above. A submission is not a claim, a payment, or a guarantee of inclusion; it is just a starting point for our reporting.

If you are a project team and want to claim an existing listing, use the "Claim this page" link that will appear on each live project page once Scope launches.