This book provides an original contribution to the planning and design literature. Not only
does it provide a fresh and finely grained examination of the daily challenges and
opportunities of design review practice but it does so in an ethnographically compelling
way¿through extensive references that convey and show what a distanced researcher could never
adequately summarize and paraphrase. Architects urban designers and developers will learn
about how they might work with design reviewers on the basis of the four significant roles that
a design review staff plays frequently in the design review process. Faculty and students in
architecture urban design and urban planning will learn about design governance design
regulations design culture participants processes and micropolitics in design and design
reviews. There are possibly tens of thousands of design review boards in the United States that
review proposals for building designs and site designs submitted by practitioners in
architecture landscape architecture urban design urban planning and urban development.
Given this considerable professional context the target audience of this book includes design
reviewers practitioners scholars educators and students in the fields of architecture
urban design landscape architecture urban planning and urban development.
