‘Flower Power’: How gardens can transform neighborhoods

Like many suburbanites, we spent part of the holiday weekend planting and tending to new flowers around our house. Afterwards, our house looked so much cheerier and welcoming with the front windowbox bursting with impatiens and pots of colorful flowers in front and back. In the aggregate, it's simply amazing what flowers and other landscaping can do for a neighborhood -- and not just suburbs.

In Geneva, colorful flowers in window boxes are so important to the public streetscape that residents on some streets are required to have them, a friend told me! I doubt we'd ever go for that here in the States; but if you want to improve a neighborhood, even a run-down urban neighborhood, it actually makes great a great deal sense to give gardening incentives.

Can it work? The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society's Philadelphia Green program targeted one north Philly neighborhood that "had plummeted into a stunning cycle of failure, a cycle twirled by violent crack pushers and brazen whores, intermittent gunfights and wholesale urban flight," according to the PBS series Edens Lost & Found. "Tentatively, then firmly, [resident Iris] Brown was caught up in their ideas. She could learn to plant and tend trees. She could help make gardens bloom from trash piles. And: She could organize. . . .

"The people of West Kensington have reclaimed nature in half their derelict spaces. . . . Fifteen years ago, people called [Norris Square] Needle Park for obvious reasons and residents would not cross through, even to go to church on an early Sunday morning. Drug pushers and junkies owned the park, and a falling-down shack on its grounds was great for the sex trades. Trees were old and untended, and Brown remembers seeing large branches scattered after storms.

"Brown helped the horticultural society round up enough volunteers to learn tree planting and maintenance - 'the majority of people were afraid' to even consider the idea of wresting control over their large park and their treeless curbsides, she recalls."



"Soon neighbors were fixing up their houses, planting flowers in containers and window boxes, and cleaning up graffiti," according to a report by the National Gardening Association. "People started taking pride in their neighborhood. Gardening classes for kids replaced drug deals. New street trees replaced abandoned cars, and community festivals replaced street fights. 'This community went from being one of the most drug- and crime-plagued locations in the city where people were afraid to even leave their homes, to a beautiful, safe neighborhood filled with trees, gardens, playgrounds, cultural events, and pride,' says Eileen Gallagher, project manager for Philadelphia Green."

Streetscape and physical environment matter. Things that some people consider "frills," like trees and flowers, are actually critical to making an appealing community. When looking to revitalize lower income, more urban business districts and surrounding residential areas, it pays to remember that.

How downtown San Jose bounced back - despite a new mall

My favorite quote from last week:

"When I travel to another city, I'm not interested in seeing what their Gap looks like."
-- Brian Eder, who owns an art gallery in San Jose, Calif., in a New York Times in a story about that city's re-emergence from the dot-com bust.

One of San Jose's grittier urban districts is experiencing a renaissance, despite the presence of grand new mall just a few miles away. Hmmmm, anything here sound familiar?

Reports the Times:

"On a recent balmy evening, in the South First Street Area, throngs of moviegoers gathered at the California Theater, a renovated Art Deco building. Left for dead for decades, then brought back to life a few years ago with a computer mogul's millions, the theater is now the home of the local symphony and the opera. . . . A block away, salsa lessons kicked off at a corner dance club. Diners filled the booths of a retro-chic restaurant, where bow-tied waiters toted plates of veal piccata and eggplant Parmesan. . . .

"In a city that nurtures its art institutions, an underground art scene has also taken shape. Vacant buildings, which still blemish many downtown blocks, have been transformed into temporary exhibit space for local painters and sculptors, attractive place-holders until permanent tenants arrive. . . .

"Several years before the California Theater reopened and SoFA started showing a vital nighttime pulse, developers cut the ribbon on their own downtown, five minutes west of city hall by freeway. Santana Row, a large mall with high-end retail and residential space, was decried by critics as a kind of Stepford showpiece, a triumph of commerce over culture. Mr. Eder, co-owner of Anno Domini gallery, refers to it today as Satan's Row."

I'm not going to start bashing the "Natick Collection" mall revamp before I've even seen it -- although I'll be exceedingly disappointed if the walking environment between it and the rest of the community isn't any better than the original mall's. The point here is that plenty of people enjoy a more urban, unique experience than a mall can ever offer.

How? An anchor destination that draws people there evenings and weekends is crucial -- note the movie theater in San Jose's SoFA, and the cinema showing foreign and arts films as well as U.S. commercial offerings in downtown Waltham. You also need other destinations that people can walk to, which requires an appealing streetscape.

The Amazing Things Arts Center's plans for a downtown location is a start. Improving downtown Framingham's pedestrian ambiance is also vital if downtown revitalization is going to take hold.

Residents ‘inundating Acton officials with requests for more sidewalks’

"When town officials studied the commuter-rail station and its parking problems last year, [Selectwoman Lauren] Rosenzweig said, many residents expressed a desire to make the entire area more pedestrian-friendly for commuters, parents with strollers, teenagers unable to drive, and disabled residents," the Globe reports.

The Boston Metropolitan Planning Organization is holding a walkable communities workshop in Acton June 5. Framingham has also applied to have such a workshop held in town this year.

"Glenn Berger, owner of Exchange Hall in South Acton, said he would be thrilled if Acton improved pedestrian access. Exchange Hall is a historic building formerly used as a meeting hall and department store. Now it houses a variety of businesses, and Berger hopes to renovate it and turn it into a restaurant and function hall.

"Already he has plans to move the sidewalks near his property farther from the street so there is more of a buffer. Better sidewalks throughout the village would go a long way toward attracting more walkers, he said. 'Right now the feeling is this is more of a place to drive through and not a destination, which is the goal,' Berger said."

Being a walk-to destination requires an appealing streetscape, not just the presence of sidewalks (as I've said many times, there are sidewalks on Rte. 9, but few people use them because that whole environment is aesthetically hostile to pedestrians even if technically possible [as long as you don't try to cross the street].) A sense of place also helps.

Walkability makes a local retail district more appealing to visitors, residents, potential homebuyers and businesses.

Ann Sussman, an architect and member of the town's Design Review Board, said amenities such as sidewalks draws residents to a community. Real estate listings for communities such as Concord and Lexington tout the ability to "walk to town center," she noted.

"It never says, 'Walk to strip mall or walk to Kmart.' There is a ripple effect when you have a walkable community."

Online Survey: Help the Framingham Public Library Set Future Goals

I was on the library's Web site this morning, and see that today is the last day of an online survey to give input to the longrange planning committee as it works to set the library's goals and priorities.

I had a chance to share my opinions in one of the recent community focus groups. But whether you were involved in those goups or not, you also get to share your thoughts.

It only takes a few minutes. If you live or work in Framingham, please do take a couple of minutes and give your opinions.

Copley Place vs. the Natick "Collection"

I was in Boston's Back Bay last weekend, and it struck me again how fortunate we are that the Copley Place mall was built to integrate into the neighboring community, not moat itself off. While "skywalks" often kill off the streetscape below, the walkways of Copley Place help pedestrians bridge rivers of traffic, and get to neighborhood shopping areas nearby. And if you live or work over Copley Place, you can go by foot to many different destinations in surrounding neighborhoods, including Newbury and Boylston Streets. The mall didn't kill off the nearby neighborhood retail center, one of the best urban pedestrian streetscapes in America. The Huntington Avenue streetscape could be better, but it still attracts pedestrians as well.

The revamped Natick Mall isn't finished yet, and I'm still waiting to see whether there will be any effort to integrate it into the surrounding neighborhoods. The most promising area is where the new Nordstrom's store comes close to Speen Street. Will there be an attractive pedestrian entrance from the Speen Street sidewalk into the store, and thus the mall? Or will it be like the rest of the mall, surrounding by asphalt parking with no attempt to create an appealing way to enter the area on foot? Will there be an effort to make an attractive, safe walking environment from the nearby hotels to the mall, or will it remain a hideous example of suburban sprawl, requiring a car to drive distances that you could walk in 5 minutes given a properly designed environment?

And what of the promises to connect the planned Cochituate Rail Trail to the mall, so people elsewhere in the area have a safe and attractive way to walk there -- not to mention giving people who move into the new mall condos a way to walk someplace besides the indoor stores?