I think it is important to recognize the pattern in which something is delivered really does shape the value created by the overall design effort. Good building design and good urban design rely upon the competent application of massing, scale, proportion and detail. The result should be recognizably height and weight proportionate.

Let's think about that height and weight proportionate thing.  A 12 year old puts on 30 pounds over 3 years. That weight or growth could be distributed proportionately or it could be all in on big nasty 30 pound goiter on the side of their neck. The two hypothetical 15 year olds, (one with a goiter and one without) would have the same density and the same floor area ratio.  Density and Floor Area Ratio (FAR) are such ridiculously crude metrics for measuring places we hope will have beauty and utility. Cindy Crawford and Phyllis Diller might weigh the same, but from there the similarities start to break down pretty quickly.

A developer is always going to be making decisions that really have an impact on the project with limited information.  There will be a nagging temptation to stall the decision until you have more details, but the timeliness of decisions made by the person calling the plays is critical. The tension between time pressure and partial information is a very good reason to work with tried and true building types and to trust the flexibility of good urbanism.  Knowing where the parking goes (in the back...)  Knowing where the transformers and dumpsters go (also in the back), knowing the difference between the front and back of the building, all that stuff adds up.  Knowing where the building goes on the parcel and why simplifies things quite a bit.  Preserve your bandwidth for the other tough calls you will have to make with each project.  Start small so you can accumulate some wisdom through wrestling with small problems.

When I was a young enthusiastic practitioner I really wanted to believe that people would understand and appreciate the practical, financial and social value of building and rebuilding walkable places. In those pre-PowerPoint days I logged a lot of hours with the dual slide carousel presentation thinking that if folks could just understand, then they would want to take action and build good places. (--Or at a minimum they would be less fearful and stubborn in their opposition to letting me build good places).

These days I think the essential task for urbanists is recovering and building trust. Trust in planners, architects, and builders had been broken long before before we showed up for some very understandable reason.  We need to cobble together what often turns out to be a conditional suspension of hostilities and turf fights. We need to hold it together long enough to frame some good choices and build some trust, before we can build anything else. The last thing I wanted to be worried about as an urban designer, developer, or builder were other people's feelings. (Now that's half the job). I kinda wish I was a nicer person, maybe I'd be better at this.

Civilization is hard. People get fearful and suspicious on their best day if someone is pushing to do things differently. There are plenty of reasons to distrust developers, builders, planners, Architects, Engineers, or any other profession involved in the built environment. In planning or building, attention to scale is important in building trust and providing folks with the tools to make their town better with the resources at hand.  It's hard for people to trust something big and complicated that turns into that perverse pairing of "It's too soon to tell" + "Well, it's too late to do anything about it..."