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are your design guidelines

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zONING Practice MARCh 2011

AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION

3issue number 3

Practice design guidelines

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are your design guidelinespointing in the right direction? 3

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3

issue number 3

Practice design guidelines

zoningpractice 3.11AmericAN PlANNiNg AssociAtioN | page 2

Creating Design guidelines That Work: Empowering the Local PlannerBy Douglas Hammel, aicp

Creating interesting urban places is not easy.

The local planner faces so many chal-lenges—establishing the vision, aligning development policies, leveraging the market for investment, assessing the municipal role in implementation, administering the zoning and development review process—that any bump in the road can result in an unbuilt project, or just as bad, a built project that compromises the goals of the town for the next half-century.

one tool municipalities use to shape in-vestment is design guidelines. While design guidelines have become common, many communities find them ineffective. Listening to their experiences offers clues as to why:• “They don’t match the look of our town.”

scenario, design guidelines can get saddled with the most incriminating claim—that they drove development away—though this end is often the result of other symptoms rather than a cause in and of itself. in fact, it is often the case that well-crafted design guidelines can streamline the development process by providing clear expectations that remove arbitrary decision making and inter-pretation.

This article sets forth some fundamen-tal principles to follow while developing design guidelines. (note: For the most part, design guidelines and form-based code can be used interchangeably in this article. Many of the principles are the same, even if the levels of codification or the administra-tive processes vary.) it will pose a series of key questions to be asked prior to the development of design guidelines that aim to proactively address the sentiments stated above.

What are Design guiDelines?Before developing design guidelines, it is helpful to have a realistic understanding of what they are, or more importantly, ought to be. Too often, guidelines are developed with little regard to physical, political, market, or regulatory contexts. The result is ideals that have little relevance to what can be. This sets the guidelines up for failure before they are even adopted. Consider the following as a working definition for design guidelines in this article:

Design guidelines should be an articulation of appropriate and acceptable development solu-tions to contextual challenges and goals

guidelines should be appropriate and acceptable—not necessarily ideal—since an “ideal” may not work for a given location based on a number of local factors, and they must address contextual challenges and goals because every community’s vision, process, and policy climate is different.

These illustrative plan images show some of the basic site and building characteristics that can be addressed through design guidelines.

Cam

iros

, Ltd

. (cl

ient

: Des

Pla

ines

, ilin

ois)

• “i’m not sure what they’re requiring me to do.”

• “i can’t figure out how to use the docu-ment.”

• “The design guidelines say one thing, but the zoning ordinance says another.”

• “i’m not a designer, so who am i to deter-mine what good design is?”

All of these statements, whether ut-tered by designers, developers, engaged citizens, or design reviewers, are symptom-atic of broken guidelines, and the more broken the guidelines are, the easier it is to leave them on the shelf. in the worst-case

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about the authorDouglas hammel, aicp, is an urban de-signer and senior associate at Camiros, Ltd. he has developed design guidelines and form-based codes for several com-munities, either as specific assignments or as part of comprehensive or subarea planning assignments.

Go online during the month of March to participate in our “Ask the Author” forum, an interac-tive feature of zoning Practice. Douglas Hammel, aicp, will be available to answer questions about this article. Go to the APA website at www.planning.org and follow the links to the Ask the Author section. From there, just submit your questions about the article using the e-mail link. The author will reply, and zoning Practice will post the answers cumulatively on the web-site for the benefit of all subscribers. This feature will be available for selected issues of zon-ing Practice at announced times. After each online discussion is closed, the answers will be saved in an online archive available through the APA Zoning Practice web pages.

zoningpractice 3.11AmericAN PlANNiNg AssociAtioN | page 3

What aspects of Design shoulD they control?Many communities struggle with this broad question, but there are actually many clues in local policy and context that quickly give shape to a concrete answer.

clue #1: the local VisionComprehensive plans, subarea plans, and other policy documents establish a vision with varying levels of detail. Many of these plans include, at a minimum, illustrative plans that imply some of the basic character-istics of physical development: the relation-ship between building/parking/street, scale and intensity, mix of use, and site and build-ing access. others delve more deeply into the characteristics of development: architectural styles, materials, commercial storefront design, public realm improvements, and so on. All these imply characteristics of desired development that can inform design policy.

clue #2: the existing Built contextAssuming there is a clearly stated vision, one can compare and contrast it against the exist-ing built environment to determine the key design elements that need to be addressed. This will also illustrate the magnitude of the challenge. is the vision close to reality, mean-ing the design guidelines can focus on details and retrofitting an existing environment, or are

the two so different that the design guidelines must address the big ideas to make sure the stage is set for transformation over time?

clue #3: the regulatory contextone of the simplest exercises is to ask what the existing ordinance does not address. Traditional zoning focuses on mitigating the impacts of development on adjacent proper-ties. Design guidelines can complement this by either tightening up requirements (i.e., build-to zones instead of typical required set-backs) or introducing new controls related to building massing, materials, site and build-ing access, facade design, and landscaping.

Collectively, these clues can focus the attention in the drafting of design guidelines to those characteristics of development that represent local tastes and accomplish the primary design objectives.

What forces shape the Design guiDelines?You’ve determined that the specific location of a building on its site is important. now what is the appropriate setback related to the public right-of-way? What should happen between the front of the building and the sidewalk? Where should parking be located, and how should it be accessed to best serve the building? The answers to these and many other questions become the heart of the design guidelines. Any characteristic of

When assessing existing conditions, it can be helpful to look at satellite images to see variations in parcel, street, and block types from place to place.

© 20

11 google

design—whether it is building location and scale, landscape palette, style, awning form, etc.—must be described with enough detail to demonstrate the design intent and define the metrics necessary for users to interpret it. Determining what that specific intent is and what the metrics are for assessing is not always easy, but there are several techniques to assist the authors.

focused VisioningAs mentioned earlier, planning documents and policies can provide clues about the intended vision of a community. however, these plans may not specifically address the geographic area design issue at hand. in many cases, focused visioning can concen-trate the community on the specific question, “What should this type of development in this part of our town look like?” image prefer-ence surveys are an effective tool for this, and the most effective surveys use street-level photographs of sample development types. This offers the audience the same perspec-tive through which they would experience their own built environment. it is then the role of the author to translate the input into plans, elevations, perspectives, or diagrams.

assessment of the Built contextin order to turn the “ideal” into the “accept-able and appropriate,” preferred development

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DOES YOUR COMMUNITY ENCOURAGE RESIDENTIAL SOLAR INSTALLATIONS?

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zONING Practice fEbRuARy 2011

AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION

is it time to rethink your community’s commercial strips? 2

issue number 2

Practice corridor Planning

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zONING Practice DECEMbER 2010

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Practice community character

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HOW dOes yOur cOmmunity integrate public HealtH intO develOpment revieW?1

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zoning Practice october 2011

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