Downtown San Diego's New Design Review Process

Implications: Good for Downtown San Diego's redevelopment arm, Centre City Development Corporation (CCDC), for wanting to significantly elevate the level of discourse with respect to overall issues of urban design and the design of individual projects.

Analysis:

Downtown San Diego's redevelopment arm, Centre City Development Corporation (CCDC) is embarking on a new design review process that will be a very important step in furthering the goals and objectives of its new Downtown Community Plan. Starting with hosting some of this country's top architects in a high-powered brainstorming session, as this article talks about, was a productive kickoff to this new process.

CCDC has made it clear that it intends to raise the bar with respect to the design quality of downtown in general and new projects in particular. It plans on accomplishing this by providing input to development teams at an earlier phase of project planning and design. This will also ensure an improved, steamlined process for accomplishing project design review in a simplified and timely manner, as outined in Section 5.9 of its new Development Community Plan.

Many cities have already successfully utilized design professionals in the planning and growth of their cities.  It appears that CCDC wants to learn from their experience.