Few Communities Interested In Romney ‘Smart Growth’ Plan

At first glance, it seems like a good "smart growth" idea: Encourage communities to build more affordable housing in areas where there's already existing infrastructure, such as near mass transit or on former industrial sites.

But the current state plan falls short in a number of key areas.

First off, one-time bonuses totaling $4,000 or so per new unit of housing is not necessarily going to do much to offset long-term costs of educating new schoolchildren or providing other services. And local officials are skeptical over whether even that promised money would ever actually materialize.

Some suburban communities view the required densities as too high (eight single-family units, 12 two- or three-family units or 20 apartments/condos per acre), and see a "streamlined approval processes" as threatening local control, according to the Boston Globe.

Not discussed in the article but an important corollary to the lack of state funding for towns that accept the program: It's simply unfair to place the primary burden of stopping sprawl and generating more affordable housing on communities that are already doing more than their fair share in the region. What about communities with lower-density development and almost no affordable housing? They should be required to contributing something substantial if they want to keep their snob zoning -- excuse me, "rural character" -- while other towns build the housing that their teachers, police officers and firefighters can afford.

As I said in an earlier post: While I support smart-growth concepts, "I’m NOT in favor of willy-nilly turning middle-class inner-ring suburbs into urban areas while allowing richer communities to continue building more McMansion developments unchecked, so they can dump more SUVs on everybody’s roads. Traffic in Framingham and surrounding communities already suffers when exurban communities build nothing but expensive housing without enough commercial development to support it. (Those people need to go elsewhere in order to work and shop). Suburban sprawl needs to be addressed in wealthier towns that can’t or won’t create smart-growth zones.
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Traditional Town Or Suburban Sprawl?

How do you tell the difference between a traditional neighborhood type of community and housing that simply contributes to suburban sprawl? It's easy enough to label downtown Lexington as a traditional town center and Route 9 as suburban sprawl, but there's more to it than that famous judicial definition of pornography ("we know it when we see it").

Planners Dover, Kohl & Partners have come up with an easy quiz to test whether a neighborhood is an "authentic, mixed-use community" or not. Questions include: Can you find within a 5-minute walk of your home, a gallon of milk? A newspaper? A school? Does your community have an identifiable center or gathering place?

I would add: Do you enjoy walking around the neighborhood? Do you see others out walking? Is there anywhere to walk TO besides getting exercise and fresh air? Can you do any errands on foot -- and would you want to?

How Not To Build Student Housing

The Harvard Business School's new student housing complex made James Howard Kunstler's Eyesore of the Month this summer, thanks to hideously offputing architecture at every turn.

Do take a look at his commentary with photos, which clearly demonstrates why simply plunking down "green space" and a "courtyard" doesn't necessarily make an inviting public space.

Opportunity For Community: New McAuliffe Branch Library

This project would be so great for the Saxoville community and Framingham's north side in general, it's hard to know where to begin.

The north side of town is terribly underserved by library services compared with demand. Last year, the McAuliffe branch library in north Framingham was the busiest branch library in Massachsuetts. But it's certainly far from the largest.

"Based on well-established nationwide standards for library collections and services, the size of the branch needs to be nearly tripled," according to the Framingham library Web site.

As I've complained before, the current branch library has the look and feel of a trailer. There's not enough room for books, there's nowhere to hold either library or community events, and there's very little place to actually sit, read, research and spend time. In fact, there's not even enough space for the books. The building was designed to hold 16,000 volumes; it currently has more than 72,000 stuffed in.

The staff does an amazing job considering the cramped size and inability to offer any kind of appealing place to do anything more than check books in and out. But this is an unacceptable situation that's getting worse.... yet we now have a great chance for a new building that would offer so much to the community.

Average Supermarket Size Decreases

"Driven by a robust growth in target market segments — such as natural/organic, ethnic and gourmet stores — the average size of a supermarket in the U.S. decreased to 34,000 feet in 2003, taking the size of new stores below 40,000 for the first time in 10 years, according to a new study by the Food Marketing Institute (FMI)," FMI announced.

Good news indeed. Yes, superstores can be useful, but having fewer, larger grocery stores means that more people have to get in their cars and drive, even just to pick up some bread and milk. And that's a pity.

Here in north Framingham, we've lost at least three food stores since I've been here -- the old Round-up in the Saxonville Walgreen's Plaza, Purity in Pinefield and most recently Countryfare in Nobscot. Being able to walk to a supermarket was an important plus when I bought my house, but now it's either walking to an expensive convenience store (with no meat or produce), or the car (more than half an hour each way isn't really practical).

I grew up being able to walk to two supermarkets and a deli, and my mom could send my sister & I out for milk, bread and sandwich meat beginning when I was fairly young. Kids lose something when they don't have that kind of independence to run errands themselves.