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Obtain Downtown Design Guide: Urban Design Standards and Guidelines  in PDF  (December 2017)

The Downtown Design Guide: Urban Design Standards and Guidelines (“Design Guide”) is the official guide to development within the Downtown Los Angeles area, and encourages Downtown Los Angeles to develop as a more livable and sustainable community. To achieve this goal, good choices must be made at all levels of planning and design – from land use and development decisions to building massing and materials choices – with an emphasis on walkability and the making of great streets, districts, and neighborhoods.

The Design Guide supplements the City of Los Angeles’s General Plan Framework Element and Central City Community Plan, both of which promote architectural and design excellence in buildings, landscape, open space, and public space. They also stipulate that preservation of Downtown’s character and scale shall be emphasized in consideration of future development. Meanwhile, new directions in planning policy emphasize designing for pedestrian orientation and multi-modal development. To this end, the Design Guide has been created to carry out the common design objectives that maintain neighborhood form and character while promoting design excellence and creative infill development solutions.