Reading List 01/03/2026
Automated code checkers, meranti wood, shifting snowfall patterns, launching spacecraft with bullwhips, and more.
Happy new year, and welcome to the reading list, a weekly roundup of news and links related to buildings, infrastructure, and industrial technology. This week we look at automated code checkers, meranti wood, shifting snowfall patterns, launching spacecraft with bullwhips, and more. Roughly 2/3rds of the reading list is paywalled, so for full access become a paid subscriber.
Automated code checkers
I’ve previously written about historical efforts to make automated code-checking software: basically to check whether the design of a building meets code requirements algorithmically, instead of the laborious and error-prone process of manual review.
So far, these efforts haven’t been particularly successful: the only successful efforts are very narrow, small-scale checks for things like solar panel installations or energy code compliance. But the advent of LLMS opens up a new possibility for how these sorts of code checkers might work: instead of completely representing the building code and the design of your building in software form (which is what previous efforts have tried to do), simply give your construction documents to an appropriately-trained AI model. I already often use LLMs to check my work if I’m writing about a topic I don’t have a strong background in, and there’s speculation that we might see similar LLM checking for submissions to scientific journals. It stands to reason that an AI model trained on code requirements and construction documents might be quite useful for code checking, even if it wasn’t 100% accurate.
Apparently I’m not the first person to think of this idea, and there are several startups offering various flavors of AI-powered permit checking. CivCheck’s AI plan review software claims 97% accuracy, and 80% reduction in permit approval times. Govstream offers a variety of AI plan review tools, including a chatbot that applicants can ask permit-related questions to. This reddit thread has comments from a variety of folks experimenting with AI plan review in various ways.
It will be interesting to see how this trend plays out, given both the constant pressure to shave costs on the building design side and the fundamental conservatism and risk aversion of the construction industry.
Rainforests and RV interiors
Apparently the interior of recreational vehicles are largely made using meranti, a wood from southeast asia, and that demand from RVs is allegedly contributing to deforestation in the countries where meranti grows. Via the New York Times:
The United States is the world’s largest producer of recreational vehicles and has relied for decades on meranti, which is also known as lauan. The timber is processed into a plywood that is lightweight, moisture-resistant, flexible and cut into thin sheets. R.V. makers use it for interior walls, flooring, cabinets and other features.
Catering to this demand, conservation groups say, has accelerated deforestation in Borneo. In the last five years alone, tens of thousands of acres of the island’s forests have been chopped down for lauan, usually with the Indonesian government’s permission. This has contributed to the disappearance of some of the world’s largest rainforests and wetlands, unleashing dense stores of carbon, upending the lives of Indigenous people and endangering the habitats of orangutans and other animals.
Since 2020, the United States has bought more than $900 million of the lauan plywood that goes into R.V.s, the vast majority of it from Indonesia, U.S. trade data show. (Lauan is also used by the construction industry.)
Per the article, meranti is used in RVs because other materials would be thicker and heavier, but it’s not amazingly clear the relative fraction of meranti that’s used by the American RV industry. This supplier claims that meranti is “arguably the most readily available thin-panel plywood worldwide”. Wood Magazine claims that “much of it becomes plywood, plywood paneling, cabinets, and hollow-core doors. In lumber form, meranti is worked into light structural framing, moldings and trim, and low-cost furniture.” This supplier describes it as a “staple of the construction industry”. So it seems like meranti is used for lots of things, not just RVs.
On the other hand, there are a lot more RVs sold annually in the US than I expected — nearly half a million if you include all types of trailers — so if meranti is in most or all of them it certainly could be a very large fraction of demand.
National Raisin Reserve
After World War II, there was a sudden glut of raisins in the market because the US government suddenly stopped buying them (presumably because it no longer needed them for military rations). To prevent raisins from flooding the market and bankrupting farmers, the government created a national raisin reserve, which allowed the government to “seize up to 47% of raisin producers’ crops each year” to control the supply and prevent the price from collapsing. The reserve apparently existed until 2015, when the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional. Via Wikipedia:
In 1949, Marketing Order 989 was passed which created the reserve and the Raisin Administrative Committee, which was responsible for running the reserve. Once established, the reserve functioned as a government-mandated cartel, artificially limiting the raisin supply in order to drive up prices, for the collective benefit of raisin growers.
American raisins, once seized, were sent to various warehouses across California, to be stored until sold to foreign nations, fed to cattle or schoolchildren, or disposed of in any other way to get them off the market that year.
Nusantara
Iran isn’t the only country that’s trying to move its capital because the surrounding environment is becoming inhospitable. The New York Times has an article about Nusantara, a city being built from scratch in Indonesia to replace the current capitol, Jakarta, which is slowly sinking into the sea (as of 2018 half of it was already below sea level).
Part frontier outpost, part campus town, it remains unclear whether Nusantara will grow into the metropolis Mr. Joko envisioned. Officials say its current population is about 155,000, but the area surrounding the Garuda monument and the new presidential palace is home to only 10,000 people, the vast majority of them construction workers.
Nusantara is projected to cover nearly 1,000 square miles, or roughly twice the size of Los Angeles. For now, the area is mostly trees. Vast empty spaces dominate. There are limited options for restaurants and groceries, although a traditional market is being built. And for all of its greenery, there is very little shade, making the midafternoon heat unbearable.
Electricity is supplied through a combination of solar power and the power grid, but the long-term goal is for the city to run fully on clean energy.