Creating Design Guidelines

In our second post of four about design guidelines, we’re going to discuss creating design guidelines. Once you’ve made the decision design guidelines would be right for your community, it is time to start looking into creating the right guidelines for your city.

The Comprehensive Plan and Community Buy-In

The first step in creating and implementing design guidelines is achieving buy-in. Without buy-in from staff and the City Council, your community’s design guidelines will not hold up to developer pressures. Hence, without the backbone of support, it is not worth going through the process of adopting design guidelines.

To test the waters, first propose changes to your comprehensive plan. As has been stated here before, the comprehensive plan is the basis for everything your community does. Add wording to your comprehensive plan that supports the implementation of the actions that support better architectural and site design in your community.

In addition to providing a strong platform to move forward with the implementation process, adopting amendments to your comprehensive plan also opens up the public input process as public hearings are required (in most states) to adopt amendments to your comprehensive plan. This is a good time to receive feedback, good or bad, from the public. It’s also a good time to get a feeling for a Council’s interest and support for requiring better architectural design in your community as well.

Customize the Design Guidelines to Your City’s Desires

One of the most important things to remember about creating design guidelines is that they are always customizable to your community. If you search for architectural design guidelines on the internet, almost all of the design guidelines will be different. They are each as different as the communities that they are adopted for. Some communities may have utilized the design guidelines of another community as the base for their own, but there’s almost always customization. That uniqueness is a good thing. Each community has their own interests and preferences for how they want their community to look and feel. And each community has a different threshold for how strict or lenient the guidelines should be.

This goes back to the input that you strive to obtain during the drafting process. There’s going to have be buy-in from your City Council on the extent of the guidelines. Should the guidelines go so far as to pull in architectural cues from the community’s heritage? Or should it just concentrate on the durability of materials?

There are many aspects to consider thoroughly before creating your own design guidelines. But in the end, your community’s guidelines are a reflection of your city.

Involve Professionals in the Field

One good way to ensure you are on the right path with design guidelines is to involve professionals in the field. Whether to help write the guidelines or to implement them it is good to utilize those who know what you’re looking for in the process.

Architects can help craft the verbiage to make the guidelines readable to both contractors and applicant architects. It is also good to have one involved in the review of applications, administratively, or as part of a review board. Some communities that utilize a review board of citizens attempt to involve architects, landscape architects, contractors, and others in the field as they can relate well with the applicants.

Adopting Design Guidelines

Depending on state statutes, there are a number of ways to adopt design guidelines. For one community that I’ve worked for there’s been four ways utilized. These were through the subdivision agreement, a redevelopment agreement, a Planned Unit Development (PUD) ordinance, or through a zoning district/overlay.

All of these methods have their advantages and disadvantages. However, adoption through a zoning district/overlay is typically the easiest to amend as needed. The other three methods are more development-specific, whereas an overlay can cover entire corridors or an entire downtown.

Do Your Research and Get Started

If you are interested in adopting design guidelines do your research. This isn’t something that is started on a whim, adopted in two weeks, and becomes an instant success. See how nearby communities that have guidelines are doing it. Ask them about how they administer it. Ask about the pitfalls and the keys to success. Do they use a consultant to aid their review process and, if so, who? Read their guidelines and ask yourself if they make sense for your community.

There is plenty of research to do before “pen hits paper”. But get started now. You don’t have to become an architect who reviews each of the applications, but you do need to become the architect of a successful process to succeed.