The Defining Principles are completely open to suggested edits and annotations from anyone who wishes to suggest.

It is a matter of common sense that neither buildings, nor urban places can be conceived of as separate "things." They are in fact both players in one continuous whole, the continuum of outside urban place / buildings / inside place. This 3 part continuum is somewhat analogous to sky / tree / ground. It takes no great effort to see that you can not have any one of the three without the other two. Each "one" is made by its instantiation in the whole of the 3 part continuum. While buildings make places outside and inside of themselves, they also are made by these places, at the same time. While trees are literally made up from elements of the sky and the ground, the reverse also is true; the sky and the ground (soil) are in fact made from tree (plant life) materials.

We must recognize that our "development" models of the last 50 years have rendered our outside places, our urban places, about as unappealing as can be imagined. Concomitantly, and in accordance with Defining Principle #1, we have also cheapened the quality of the buildings that form and are formed by this unsatisfying urban place.

The health and well being of our civilization and culture depend heavily on our ability to design urban places that are capable of nurturing and cultivating the human spirit. Examples of such places will be shown in the GMDQUP catalogue. This is the primary purpose of the GMDQUP.

It is not difficult to create quality urban place. It is not rocket science or brain surgery. People have been able to do it almost effortlessly since the beginnings of human civilization until the present in locations throughout the world including in the United States. The lessons of the history of urban form are ready at hand.

There is no reason that we can not have quality urban place anywhere we want it. We must only decide that it is desirable.

Master Planned zoning plans and design codes are not adequate to the task. Their reach is relatively limited. And they do not require the thinking of participants. We need a mindset that allows for and demands creative thinking on the part of all participants.

Everyone involved - city planners, plan designers, developers, property owners, merchants, interested citizens, students, architects, designers, engineers, politicians, bankers, journalists, writers, philosophers, entertainers, fashion models, teachers, scientists, everyone (?) - should have some familiarity with the concept described in Defining Principle #1. Everyone involved should work toward developing their abilities in conceiving of designs for urban places and buildings, and in communicating proposals and negotiations for the same.

Quality Urban Place requires an environment within which the concept of a continuum is allowed to flourish. This is simply a matter of political will. It is a matter of understanding and allowing for the idea that the possibilities for the design of quality urban place are almost unlimited. And it requires a willingness to try some creative ideas in urban design. While the eventual establishment of certain design guidelines (codes)is probably inevitable, these should always be considered to be of secondary importance to the creative thought and flexibility of everyone involved in designing, approving, financing, regulating, or planning buildings and urban places.

Quality Urban Place requires critical judgement. We propose an active community of participating THINKING people who understand many of the potential qualities of urban place and who can agree to act to create these places. We believe in the ability of people to commit to flexibly creating quality urban places as needed. We believe that the best urban places are usually those that are a very complex mixture of competing factors and uses. We find that reductive thinking that can approve or dismiss an urban place proposal simply on the grounds of some coded parking place ratio to be counter-productive. We extend this line of thought by proposing that even the kinds of zoning that are seemingly well-intentioned regarding the formation of Quality Urban Place, namely 1990's style New Urbanist zoning, also carry the potential for prolonging thoughtless urban design because they tend to focus more on the master plan than they do on cultivating the innate ability of everyone involved in creating buildings and places to flexibly generate both ideas and compromises as necessary in order to achieve the shared goal and vision of a variety of quality urban places.

We believe Quality Urban Place can easily be accomplished anytime the people involved understand that their goal is to create Quality Urban Place. We believe this can be accomplished on a grand scale or on a small scale. And we believe that since most building projects occur on a small scale (the scale of the project only) we believe it can also over time be accomplished with each small project building on and contributing to the quality urban place, or the potential for the same, that has been established by small projects that have gone before in proximity.

We propose that all that is needed is a general understanding of just what exactly constitutes Quality Urban Place.

To that end, we endeavor to assemble the Catalogue of the GMDQUP. The Guidelines for Municipalities in the Design of Quality Urban Places will primarily consist of a growing Catalogue or library of images submitted by anyone who cares to submit them. We solicit images of urban places that people have lived in, visited, or seen in photos. Anyone who can provide an image of any kind showing an urban place that they particularly enjoyed is invited to send the image to the GMDQUP website for inclusion in the Catalogue. Text blurbs (descriptions) sent with the images will be displayed in the Catalogue as well.

It is our intention that the Catalogue grow to a significant size over time, and that it be used as an "idea well" in the creation of new Quality Urban Places. The Catalogue should demonstrate that the possibilities for QUP are almost limitless, that the potentials for the design of QUP are enormous.

We hope that the Catalogue will help foster a climate of creative thought among all participants in the creation of urban places. In so doing we hope to promote the idea of a continuum of urban place and buildings.