The settlements of pre-contact Northwest Coast indigenous cultures have been largely marginalized from consideration as planned and designed settlements by theorists adhering to European-based models of community development.  This disenfranchisement has been largely  based on an apparent lack of orthogonal geometry in the indigenous village layouts, the absence of traditional patterns of agriculture usually associated with urbanization, and an unrecognized hybrid form of cultural structure merging “hunting and gathering” with intermittent but permanent sedentism. 

On closer examination the villages of the region have demonstrated, over the past 3000- 5000 years, three critical attributes associated with planned communities; intentionality in their design, a repetitive use of standard features, and coordination of buildings to create exterior public activity areas.  With these qualities of formal planning and design obviated in the morphology of the villages, it is perhaps necessary to reconsider their status in the hierarchy of planning archetypes, incorporating a more enlightened set of criteria than the current single-minded adherence to European models of planning.