The importance of apartment living in creating sustainable cities has gained wide recognition as many Australian cities are beginning to grapple with rising populations. Concurrent with this shift in prioritisation, high density housing in Melbourne has experienced increasing pressures in terms of affordability and financialisation. Many practitioners, policy makers and members of the public have expressed concern about the quality of living that current apartment designs offer as a result. The role of government intervention in design quality in high density housing through regulations has also seen increasing attention. Debate has occurred on the role and ability of assessment tools to improve design quality and whose interests they best serve.In response to these concerns, this research seeks to understand how design quality assessment tools vary and what are their possibilities and limitations to supporting improved design quality in apartments? This research question involves an interdependence between the normative lens of how should design assessment tools define quality as well as an awareness of the political context behind the policy making process that influences this definition. Alexander (2001) proposes that a combined approach between the normative aspect of communicative planning and the power analysis of phronetics can provide further understanding of the tools that were able to negotiate the current political context to avoid a constrained definition and effectively improve design quality. This paper however argues that additional methods that provide greater detail than those originally presented by the two theories is required in order to achieve Alexander’s stated objective of enabling planning policy research to create more effective policy and improve design quality in apartments.