Design Review in the Pacific Northwest

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

• Findings from Seattle and Portland, Oregon, cities that evaluated their design- review programs to improve their processes and criteria
• New ways to adapt design-review programs in the midst of development growth
• Early lessons from pilot projects from two cities striving to transform their design-review programs

MORE SESSION DETAILS

Design review has strong roots in Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, where community engagement and collaboration are highly valued. Development is booming, and design review programs are busier than ever! Learn how both cities are adopting ways to keep development moving while ensuring quality design for long-lasting buildings. Neither design-review program — Portland's, established in the 1970s, and Seattle's, established in 1994 — has conducted a full reform since they started. Now, each city is proposing sweeping changes to respond to current and future needs. Both intend to change thresholds for projects subject to design review. In addition, other changes in Seattle include creating a new “hybrid” process that allows one phase of design review to be handled administratively and the remainder to be overseen by the design review board, requiring applicants to establish a dialogue with the communities before they begin design review, allowing affordable-housing projects to be reviewed through an administrative design-review process, and limiting the number of public board meetings for certain types of projects. In Portland, other changes include establishing a suite of new design review criteria, improving public notice requirements, realigning the city’s design-review process with the applicants’ design process, and rewriting the purpose statement for design overlay zones.