Visual Preference Survey

Shaping a New Neighborhood: How Your Input Helps Guide Design

In past posts, we shared two fundamental aspects of the HEW Renew process. In Designing with Constraints, we laid out what the site, its history, and its regulatory framework actually allow. In From Input to Intention, we described the values that emerged from our Phase I community engagement, values that now inform how we weigh tradeoffs as this project moves forward. Together, those two pieces help answer important questions: What is possible here? And what should matter most as choices are made?

Whatever gets built here won't just be a set of buildings. It'll sit next to existing homes, shape the street it faces, and set the tone for whatever comes after it. The iconic HEW building and any additional housing will become its own neighborhood while still fitting thoughtfully into the one that's already here. So as we move into design, the next important question is the one this survey is designed to answer: given everything we've already established, what should a future project actually look and feel like?

What Is a Visual Preference Survey

A visual preference survey, often called a VPS, is a structured way to gather people's reactions to different, specific design attributes. It doesn't ask you to respond to a finished project proposal. Instead, it shows you concrete examples of design elements — typology, scale, site layout, streetscape, architectural character, amenities — and asks what feels most appropriate for this place.

Think of the results as signals, rather than a vote. It won't decide whether this project happens, and it isn't a majority rule over any single outcome. It's a way of surfacing where people's instincts land when they're shown real choices instead of asked to imagine hypothetical ones.

From Guidelines to Standards

City codes, regulations, and design guidelines set the baseline requirements for any development — things like height limits, setbacks, land-use rules, and to a large degree aesthetics. Those are set, objective, and apply no matter what. They're the floor.

The visual preference survey will help us determine design standards. These are different: nobody is imposing them on this project; we're incorporating them intentionally, because we want a level of consistency and craft that will guide future phases and design decisions.

What the Survey Explores

The survey focuses on six primary elements that together influence how a project fits into its surroundings:

Building Types & Typology. What kind of buildings actually belong here — single-family houses, cottage courts, small multiplexes, low-rise apartments — sets the tone before anything else about a design registers. Typology shapes everything downstream of it: how private and shared space get divided, how a site reads from the street, even how neighbors end up interacting with each other.

Size, Scale & Mass. Independent of code, this is how a building's proportions register against the human body and against its neighbors, and how its volume is organized and articulated against itself. A structure can satisfy every height limit on the books and still read as oversized — or undersized — if its massing isn't handled with care.

Site Layout & the Balance of Residential, Communal, and Open Space. A neighborhood isn't only its buildings — it's how much of the land is given to housing versus shared amenities versus open, natural space, and how those pieces relate to one another. This is where a development starts to feel like a neighborhood rather than a collection of units.

Streetscape, Frontage & Landscape. This is what it's like to walk through the neighborhood. Setbacks, planting, sidewalks, porches, fencing, and how a building meets the ground all shape whether a street feels welcoming or walled off — often more than the building itself does.

Architectural Aesthetic & Style. Materials and ornamentation carry historic association and signal permanence, and materials that read as cheap can undercut that trust even where scale and layout are right. The Gold Rush era left this area with a range of aesthetics and levels of decoration, and the survey presents a range of architectural styles so people can weigh in on where this project should sit within it.

Amenities. What's actually offered to the people who live here and to their neighbors — gathering spaces, shared outdoor areas, trails, gardens, a community space, the kinds of features that turn a project into a place people want to be part of, not just live adjacent to.

What This Becomes

The survey results become working input for a new set of design standards. Responses help identify patterns across many people rather than a handful of opinions. It provides direct evidence about where people see common ground, and where concerns or differences encourage more consideration. It refines typology, scale, layout, streetscape, and style within the site’s physical and regulatory constraints. It gives the design team clear, comparable feedback to carry into the next stage of work 

The resulting design standards will help guide decisions as the project takes shape. They are intended to create continuity across future phases while leaving room for thoughtful design and continued community input.

This Is an Invitation, Not a Pitch

Good design is an active process. With HEW Renew we also believe it's a collaborative one. Rather than presenting a single pre-packaged plan for reaction, we want to build these standards by working alongside the community from the beginning.

That's why your voice matters here — not as a courtesy, but because we genuinely believe better neighborhoods come from people weighing in early, while it can still make a difference.

The Visual Preference Survey is live now.  You can find it linked [here]. It takes about fifteen minutes and it asks real questions about real options, not abstractions. We'd love to hear what you want this neighborhood to become.