Urban Design Guide of the United States---Design Policies and Guidelines of Five Cities on the West Coast

Author: (Canada) Peng Te, translated by Pang Yue
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-08-01
Features: This book is a study on urban design work and urban design policies in five cities along the U.S. West Coast. These cities are: Seattle (including Bellevue), Portland, San Francisco, Irvine, and San Diego. The urban design experiences of these cities are very interesting and have close connections with design practices in the UK and other countries. Although these cities are not typical representatives of all U.S. design practices, they provide a wealth of information on recently formulated design policies and current urban design behaviors, which will prompt consideration of establishing effective urban design control systems. The book contains numerous excerpts from important documents that laid the foundation for the design control systems in these five cities. Professionals and scholars who wish to learn more about U.S. case studies, as well as those seeking to improve urban design policies and the standards and quality of design control, will find this book of great interest, inspiration, and value. The opening chapter provides the domestic context and comparative framework for this research, while focusing on international perspectives, the U.S. planning system, and the development of comparative and evaluation standards. The following five chapters sequentially discuss the five cities. Before explaining how planning and design policies have gradually evolved over the past 25 years, each chapter briefly reviews the distinctive characteristics of the respective city. It emphasizes the key features of contemporary design control systems and provides a concise evaluation. The case studies focus on how design policies and guidelines were formulated, structured, and presented in various documents that form the framework of design policies, how control procedures operate, and how design work and control systems respond to criticism. The urban design experiences studied in the book have broad connections with U.S. design review practices, and the final chapter summarizes these findings, which will also be of interest to those working on design review and design policy formulation in various regions.