The Waikiki Special District, a set of regulations in place to direct development, have been in need of an overhaul for decades, although the rationale for that makeover keeps evolving.

Reimagining Waikiki for the future will mean achieving a delicate balance among concerns for tourism, housing and adding in resilience to flooding, and other hazards of a changing climate.

And this must happen all without sacrificing the sun-washed, welcoming charm that draws visitors to Hawaii each year. That is largely a challenge of design, to be met in part through keeping building heights in check as much as possible and in seeing that abandoned, degraded properties are redeveloped properly. Nobody should want to make Waikiki any more cavernous and run-down than it already is.

The Waikiki Special District was added to the Honolulu Land Use Ordinance in 1976, in recognition that the drive for more high-rise hotels needed to be managed for the district, given its status as the state’s premier resort destination.

Before they were last updated in 2011, the special district rules had guided the redevelopment of major projects such as the Hilton Hawaiian Village and the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center.

With the revisions a decade ago, attention then turned to the need to enable more development and redevelopment in the district’s commercial core and to expand Waikiki’s apartment mixed-use precinct.

In the intervening 10 years, individual resort owners have been responding to the market pressures for updating properties to meet the current demands of the visitor industry.

Fortunately, now there is also interest in revisiting the entirety of the district rules to make much broader fixes. The impetus in this round has become the critical shortage of affordable housing and the looming threat of storm damage and sea-level rise as a result of climate change.

Unfortunately, barriers remain for getting this mammoth project done. Revisions are being drafted by key players — Honolulu City Council Chairman Tommy Waters among them — but addressing the climate-change issues largely remains on the to-do list.

Further, this is yet another major amendment to city ordinances that lands on the plate of the Department of Planning and Permitting.

Whatever proposal floats up from Waters’ office, along with input from the Waikiki Beach Special Improvement District Association, the Waikiki Improvement Association and other experts and stakeholders, it will need to be reviewed by DPP, which is currently without a permanent director.

And that presents yet another reason for Mayor Rick Blangiardi to see that this spot is filled.

Navigating the climate-change adaptations in particular is an all-hands-on-deck imperative that everyone can recognize. Already residents have witnessed the force of the “king tides” washing farther up the beach zone, erasing it in places, than anyone would have described as normal.

There is no shortage of expertise. The University of Hawaii Sea Grant College Program, the School of Architecture and the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology already are working on a coastal flood adaptation project for the district.

Dolan Eversole, Sea Grant’s Waikiki beach management coordinator, told Honolulu Star-Advertiser writer Allison Schaefers that workshops were held over a three-month period last year.

Rightly, Eversole observed that the timing is ideal for a major revision to the Waikiki Special District because building blocks are already starting to accrue. Last year the city updated design guidelines for the district, and the Legislature has just allocated $400,000 for the state Office of Planning and Sustainable Development to begin work on the Waikiki Adaptation and Resilience Plan. All should be part of Waikiki’s unified vision.

Those new design guidelines already would improve the look of Waikiki, if properly implemented. For example, they lay out the principal of integrating landscaped elements on adjoining properties to make the most of what open space is available, to allow for a more pleasant street-level appearance.

Potentially, design elements focused on climate resilience — open-air ground floors, or perhaps adaptive water features — also could help to make Waikiki feel less crowded. Ideas from the state’s architecture professionals and the UH students and faculty could be put to excellent use.

Some focus should be put on other improvement efforts as well, particularly those that fulfill other crucial needs. The advance of a senior affordable housing project on the site of a condemned property at 1615 Ala Wai Blvd. is a case in point. Cosmetic fixes should be encouraged, too. Enhancements that date to Mayor Jeremy Harris’ administration, as well as those added for the international Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in 2011, should not be the end of the story.

This is Waikiki, Hawaii’s economic engine, after all. It’s high time that it be allowed to look the part.