They still hold up well

I was cleaning out some old drafts and I ran into Professor Gary Hack's  'Ten Commandments of Design Review'. I think they are pretty astute so I'll post them. Please note especially #s 7,8 & 9.

1. Design Review is a not quick fix and is not a substitute for rezoning. Design review works best when it deals with how to develop, not whether or what to develop. It is destined for failure if design issues are mixed with basic issues of use and scale.

2. Do not overreach. Don't try to regulate too much. Isolate the small number of critical aspects of design that can make a difference. Ask: "How few rules to set?"

3. Have standards: do not invent them as you go along. Inventing rules on the fly is a sure prescription for a crash landing. There must be precise rules available in advance of using the process.
 
4. Tell people in advance what you would like to see. You can only review what you get. Provide illustrations, give awards to projects that are sensitive to neighborhood concerns. Providing adequate information will help produce applications that approximate what is desired.

5. Design review inherently involves editorializing. Value judgements and choices must be made. Communities are diverse. Many places have no character or qualities that are desirable to reproduce, and in those cases decisions about the type of design that is desirable must be made.

6. Design review needs patronage, a core of supporters who stick with it over time. The support is necessary because in the process a lot of people will not be getting all they want. The supporters will help shore up the process when those who have not gotten what they want from it become frustrated. A review board of highly respected members can play this role, or there could be a group appointed to monitor and evaluate the process that also assumes this role.

7. Be prepared to break the rules. The best environments have landmarks, folly and divergence from the norm. This is especially true of public institutions, public locations or intersections.

8. Preserve the future as well as the past. Create some new things--things that are not there today. Remember the importance of diversity and have a vision of what the neighborhood ought to be like.

9. Design review is not about creating beautiful buildings. It is not taste making. It is about creating good street, good communities and protecting important symbols and about determining whether new development fits in.

10. Start by identifying the icons and the aliens in a neighborhood. Identify the buildings which give a neighborhood its unique character or serve as significant landmarks, as well as those styles of structure which does not belong. Establish the rules from there.

I first heard them when Hack came to Seattle to give a talk some 15 years ago and they have stuck with me.