I'm a retired structural engineer who got on some local housing committees in the early 90s. Much of my client base at that time was getting young families into affordable houses and business locations via additions/remodels. The local disfunction was typically an onerous "design review" oriented planning commission, with vague left-leaning opinions that pitted applicant against neighbor. Granted, the design review was well-intended, if abstruse, and it really ran up costs. With the help of others, I began to realize that many of these design enhancers could be codified into a rather simple "opt out". In other words, if the home or business had certain basic features, the applicant could bypass the draconian planning commission design review, and of course they could always opt for design review for "out of the box" designs. The basic opt out features were generally as follows:

Businesses: Awnings, smaller signage (often accompanied by main street master signage for basic orientation), a basic two-step min. color or texture variation (ie shingle/brick), and a parapet design (for flat roofs)

Homes: 2nd story setback (typically 25' min if 1st story had 20' min setback) so as to create variation and lack of monolithic look, minimum two texture or color variation, and perhaps a bay window/dormer or two (this is often a basic variation feature). Gabled roofs were also a virtue (but not required) and the 2nd story setback encouraged gabled roofs.

Actually, though this ran up costs a bit, the applicants and reviewers liked it as it simplified things. Of course the industry can prefab bay windows and dormers , gables, parapets, awnings so as to control costs. There will always be charges of "socialism" from our cracker-box leaning developer friends, but generally this is all a win-win from a long-term property-value standpoint. I guess the final frontier would be to ape the medieval mew with narrow street so as to create live-works, but first we need to de-emphasize the auto (which has conspired to destroy many a good design with large garages etc). Thanks for the thought-provoking article!