The urban architecture of the city of Seoul has been regarded as means to support the economic growth by supplying fast and inexpensive products such as large scale land development, housing and commercial buildings in the process of radical urbanization. Due to the concept of the urban development, growth and construction as a product the resources of the unique history and culture of Seoul has been damaged and Seoul has been turned into a culturally unidentified city. The architectural design review committee system of Seoul has been administered since 1974 by establishing the ordinances of the design review committee. And since then, the criticisms such as the redundant design review committee process, the lack of consideration of the regional situation, the lack of consistency and objectiveness of the outcome, and the regulative device that impedes the creativity have been pointed out. Recently in 2007, the city of Seoul proposed a Apartment Housing Design Review Guideline, test-ran it for one year and administered it as a design review committee guideline since 2008. The intent is to make the city of Seoul better environmentally by proposing a new guidline for the urban development. And therefore, it is meaningful to study the guideline in terms that how it resolved the existing problem and improved it. The purpose of the study is to investigate the reinforced design review committee guideline by analyzing the history, background and the current changes of the guideline and to judge the effectiveness based on the case study analysis. The results of the study is as follows. It is acknowledged that the new reinforced design review guideline made the retrial rate raised, improved the perception of the citizen of Seoul in design Seoul, and made positive outcome in environment-friendly and energy saving design. And also it made positive outcome in building design, public space design and environmental design as well. However, it still needs improvement in that the design review guideline needs to be administered with more consistency and objectiveness, and as a tool to guide the creative design rather than being a regulative device. To achieve this, all the parties involved such as the client, architect, design committee, and administration officers need to acknowledge from the same stance and take their own responsibilities to improve it.