Framingham Town Elections Tuesday

There's a three-way race for two Planning Board seats, as well as contests for Board of Selectmen, School Committee and several other town-wide offices. Pitifully, only four of 18 precincts have contested races for Town Meeting, while more than half have more openings than candidates.

For Planning Board, incumbents Carol Spack and Tom Mahoney face a challenge by Stephen Meltzer. In addition to their Web sites, you can see the responses that Mahoney (see his site) and Meltzer (see his site) gave to questions I posed. Carol Spack said she tried to weave in answers to the issues I raised at a candidates' night event we both attended.

Framingham Bicycle & Pedestrian Committee Meets 4/11

The Framingham Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Committee meets Tuesday, April 11 at 7:30 pm in Conference Room 1 of town hall.

Chair William Hanson reports the following is Tuesday night's agenda:

Stupid Headline of the Day

It costs nearly $40,000, gets just 15 miles a gallon, weighs over two tons and is 89 inches across -- almost two feet wider than a Toyota Corolla. But according to the Boston Globe, the 2006 Jeep Commander is Hummer-like, Yet Practical. Excuse me? Practical?

Well, no doubt it's useful for an arrogant, self-absorbed driver who doesn't care about others on the road. "To small cars crawling beside us, we can say 'humbug,' " writes reviewer Royal Ford. "Humility is not a trait of the humongous."

Nice.

No reason to worry that it'll cost over $2,000/year to fill up if you drive 13,000 miles/year.

Or, for that matter, that it blocks the view of those in passenger cars. Or that the U.S. is responsible for 25% of the world's energy use and 36% of all greenhouse gas emisisons despite having less than 5% of the world's population.

‘Bright Spot on a Wasteland’

"Unless you are in search of dark thoughts, there is little reason to go and experience the public realm that lurks along Lake Shore Boulevard East. What was imagined as a green boulevard has been transformed, seemingly overnight, into suburbia," laments Toronto columnist Lisa Rochon in the Globe & Mail. She decries the ugly stretches of big-box retailers and chain fast-food restaurants -- "Sprawling, lowest-common-denominator architecture and masses of parking" as she put it (sound familiar?) -- that have grown up in much of the city's waterfront. "Any promise of livability and delight has been traded away by the city in its determination to maintain what it calls 'employment lands.' "

And the bright spot?

West Don Lands has a map, capable captains and a bright future. A sustainable community with high energy efficiency and green roofs has been demanded by the local community and promised by the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation. Six thousand new residences, including 1,200 units of affordable rental housing, will be built over the next decade. Some historic buildings, such as the Canary restaurant and the Dominion Foundry, will be saved and integrated into the plan.

A park design by Michael Van Valkenburgh, a distinguished American landscape architect and maker of bucolic, healing landscapes like Pittsburgh's Allegheny Riverfront Park, has been commissioned by the TWRC to design the eight-hectare Don River Park, which will roll over a berm and protect the neighbourhood against flooding of the Don. Van Valkenburgh, working together with Toronto urban designers Ken Greenberg and David Leinster, may also tackle other green spaces in the area. Given the city's abusive relationship with the waterfront, it's a hallelujah moment.

The Importance of Trees

Globe columnist Derrick Z. Jackson makes a good point about the critical role trees can play in building community. "[T]he value of urban trees has become clear in recent years," he writes in The Return of the Trees, which highlights Milwaukee's successful replacement of thousands of Dutch elms. "A 1997 study by the University of Illinois showed that crime in a housing project was significantly less and community bonds were stronger on tree-lined parts of the project than on barren parts."

He remembers how the majestic old elms created a shade canopy on streets during summers of his youth, enticing kids to play outside during the day and neighbors to chat on each other's porches at night.

After more than 125,000 elms had to be removed, however, the city's green umbrella was gone.

"Without the trees, summer heat reflected brutally off concrete. Children retreated from the congregational sidewalk to individual porches. Lightning bugs, deprived of the post-leaf raking debris they need to regenerate, dimmed into memory," Jackson recalls.

But Milwaukee invested a significant sum to plant new trees. It took awhile, but the canopy returned.

"In lots of cities, it's hard to argue for the support of trees with all the hue and cry for police and fire services," a Milwaukee environmental official told Jackson. ''But our electorate here is pretty savvy. We know we can't walk away from our 200,000 trees."

Trees - and landscaping in general - aren't frills. They help give a community heart, and soul.