Ask the code.
A reference instrument for contractors, designers, and engineers. It starts from the code that governs the address — city, county or state — and every answer cites its section.
Not every address has a city code
Ask about a setback on unincorporated county land and a city-code search finds nothing — or finds the nearest city's rule, which reads exactly as confident as the right one. City Code Assistant starts from the bodies that actually govern an address, searches the codes it has indexed for them, and names the one an answer is standing on.
- What governs
The chain for Joshua Tree
San Bernardino County Land Use Services → California Energy Commission. San Bernardino County Code of Ordinances, Titles 6 (Building Regulations) and 8 (Development Code) and California Energy Code (Title 24, Part 6) — indexed and searched.
- Whose rule
Named on every answer
Joshua Tree has no city code of its own. San Bernardino County Land Use Services is the authority for land use here, and an answer that implied a Joshua Tree ordinance would simply be wrong.
- When it can't be grounded
It says so
No guessing and no padding. An answer that cannot be tied to a section says which searches came back empty and points you at Land Use Services, Building and Safety, Code Enforcement — the offices that can actually decide it.