Center City and the Delaware riverfront are booming with construction of thousands of residential units, and new cultural, retail and restaurant uses are bringing neighborhoods to life.

But self-styled design gurus writing in the Other Paper [The Philadelphia Inquirer] give the Planning Commission no respect. They repeat their incessant mantra: important buildings are being constructed without planning. They misconceive the fundamental difference between city planning and site design.

Under the city charter, neither the Planning Commission, Zoning Board of Adjustment or Department of Licenses and Inspections is charged with designing buildings, picking materials or deciding on exterior colors. The commission's main function under the charter is, not surprisingly, planning. In fact, Center City and the Delaware riverfront are evolving largely according to plan. The commission's 1988 Plan for Center City and the 1984 Central Riverfront District Plan have served us well.

City Council's 1991 amendments to the C-4 and C-5 commercial districts modernized the zoning code to comply with the 1988 plan. Zoning changes were enacted in 1989 to carry out the 1984 waterfront plan.

The zoning code now places high-density development in Center City where it belongs, on major east-west streets like Market, JFK and South Penn Square; provides for greater density where projects like Liberty Trust's Comcast Tower offer public space and other civic amenities, and protects residential streets by preserving lower scale buildings.

The riverfront plan calls for a riverwalk, the promotion of river development as a "unique attraction for tourists" and the rezoning of outmoded port and industrial property for commercial and residential uses. The evolution from port-related industrial uses to residential and commercial uses has gone smoothly. Residential developments like Dockside and the condo towers now under construction at Waterfront Square are examples of using the assets of the river to build new communities. The Hyatt at Penn's Landing and the Dave and Buster's provide a major hotel resource and a year-round entertainment destination.

The 1984 plan recognized that "the Central Riverfront can become, as it was in William Penn's day, a part of the commercial, residential and institutional core of Philadelphia." Even with the obstacle of I-95 separation, this goal is within reach. As the plan wisely recognized, "the precise design and timing of actual projects however, are left to the marketplace."

In fact, the marketplace has arrived. Residences, hotels and entertainment and other commercial uses have transformed the riverfront. In large measure, the plan has worked, notwithstanding a 1989 real-estate recession, the bursting of a gaming bubble in the early '90s and, more recently, a weakening national retail commercial market that frustrated Mel Simon's proposal for a family entertainment center at Penn's Landing.

So let's for once as Philadelphians celebrate our success. The Planning Commission has done what it is supposed to do and not micromanage the site design of important projects coming to market.