Place-Making and Design Review

There’s an often-quoted and well-worn adage that the camel is an animal designed by committee. This is clearly a poor description of this beast since it is not only homocentric, but lacks what should be a central ingredient of the design process—organic growth and evolutionary change. From this perspective the (Arabian) camel may be seen to be a creature of elegant design, superbly adapted through evolutionary time to dry desert environments, capable of traveling at speeds of eight to ten miles per hour for eighteen hours, able to go without food or water for weeks, and to flourish on the coarsest of vegetation. Thus, if the design review process could design cities as well as nature has designed the camel, with the same elegance and sense of environmental fit that make for livable urban places with a clear sense of regional identity, then cities would be the ideal places they should be to work and play in. Since this does not seem to be the case, the question of design review requires some examination.