While it doesn't hurt having people with urban design experience employed by the City, the real problem is with entiries like the DDRB. It should be filled with urban activist not the incessant relationship between developers, industry professionals, and City board members we have now. Put me and some other like-minded individuals on the DDRB and you would get a whole different downtown.
A more serious reply. I don’t think having developers and industry professionals is the issue. The challenge is finding the RIGHT developers and professionals. It can’t just be urban minded activists. I suppose you could have 1 or 2, but you have to have professional knowledge from people that know what they’re doing.
Example: The Residence Inn In Brooklyn. The developer of the project is right to call out the buried utilities under Price St. As urban advocates, I’d say screw the utilities and build on top of them.
What a good developer/land planner/architect does is say, “ok the issue is legit. How do we design this thing so it fits in to the urban fabric better?”. Lakelander had the suggestion of just moving the building so it properly fronts Magnolia, which I thought was a good compromise. Forest St’s Widening screwed up a bunch of stuff, but it’s not the developer’s job to fix that mess (road diet, anyone?).
