At the February 7 meeting of Northampton's planning board, one member characterized as "carbuncles" condo developments that integrate poorly with their surrounding neighborhoods.

Let's take a look at the characteristics of some attractive streets with detached houses in the North Street neighborhood, and then contrast them with three carbuncle candidates--two built and one proposed.



Trees between homes on North Street give shade and privacy



These trees on a private yard look well cared for and beautify the neighborhood. Urban Forest Landscapes reports that trees on private yards have a low mortality rate over a 30-year period (18%). By contrast, trees in parks, public housing, or along highways have a mortality rate of 39% (p.185, Chicago Benefit-Cost Study).



Greenspace between homes permits residents to cultivate flower, herb and vegetable gardens



This intensely gardened home on Northern Avenue has edible plants growing on all four sides

Below are houses on a loop through North Street, Bates Street, the new bike trail, and Woodmont Road. Note the remarkable variety of sizes, styles, price points and configurations. Some houses are one-family, others more. Some are owner-occupied, others are rentals. The net result is a neighborhood that attracts people with a diverse mix of incomes, ages, jobs and living situations. The varied and distinctive personalities of each house, the lawns and gardens, and numerous large, handsome trees are key components of the charm of our neighborhood.























































Now let's contrast the above to two relatively new condo developments in Ward 3 and a third one proposed by Kohl Construction. Some general points to note:

• The condo units look closely similar. They lack individuality. Beyond questions of aesthetic appeal, they may not attract as wide a range of residents as the more diversified stock above. Families with small children, for example, may be put off by the lack of private yards.
• The Hockanum and Bixby condos have a large footprint relative to their lot sizes. Relatively little greenspace remains. In particular, it's hard for these developments to accommodate as many large trees and their extensive root systems. This is another hit to attractiveness and deprives the condos of the shading and windbreak properties of trees and their ability to absorb water.
• Due to the volume of impervious surface, the Hockanum and Kohl condos call for detention ponds to manage excess flows of water. As the city has discovered at Northampton High School and Carlon Drive, these wetlands mitigation schemes can perform badly if not carefully maintained. They can form breeding grounds for mosquitoes and present a safety hazard for children.
• To maximize profits, the developers have shoehorned units into their lots with little regard to the preexisting appearance of their neighborhoods. The developments feel inward-facing or 'withdrawn', not part of the regular street fabric. These aspects are probably what prompted the "carbuncle" comment from the planning board member.
  

This is the condo development on Hockanum Road:





Hockanum condo detention pond

This is the development at Bixby Court:





These closely packed units have a garage in between, rather than greenspace

The condo development below has been proposed by Kohl Construction (see most current update) for the wooded area behind North Street:





The roads and condos are slated to encroach within 35 feet of wetlands


If a trend towards dense, monotonous developments gains momentum, we can expect to see larger effects on Ward 3, such as higher temperatures, more air pollution, more traffic congestion, a greater risk of flooding from the spread of impervious surface and encroachment on wetlands, and an overall reduction in charm and beauty. This is not inevitable, but it appears we need to adjust our zoning to preserve what's good about where we live. Let your city councilors know how you feel.


See also:

An Update from the Ward Three Neighborhood Association (5/20/08)
...Our second committee, the Sustainability Committee, is charged with reading the city's new Sustainability Plan and keeping the board updated on issues relating to Ward 3. The committee has focused on the proposal to rezone many neighborhoods throughout the city (including many in Ward 3) for much denser development, and this has the potential to become a really hot potato. We're ahead of the curve on this issue and will make sure Ward 3 residents have ample notice of any proposed meetings and/or zoning changes. Jim Nash and Owen Freeman-Daniels have been instrumental in forming the committee and are looking for more residents to join.

The New Draft Sustainable Northampton Plan: Balancing Compact Growth Against Taxes, Urban Greenspace, Homeowner Preferences
An objective of the Plan is to "implement ideas for maximizing density on small lots". (p.16) It calls for the City to "consider amending zero lot line single family home to eliminate 30' side yard setback". (p.69)

Planning Board Adopts Sustainable Northampton Plan
[New language in Plan:] "Traditional Neighborhood and Receiving Zone — These are currently the most developed areas with planned expansion of developable area to accommodate expected demand for new growth. These areas can accommodate the vast majority of new smart growth residential development... More focus on design details, encouraging designs compatible with historic neighborhoods, focus on pocket and linear parks and on the quality of life generally are key elements for encouraging a population density consistent with the highest quality neighborhoods present 50 years ago."

...[NSNA is] concerned...about the reference to densities of 50 years ago. Much has changed since then. In particular, women have far more jobs outside the home, meaning more cars are on the road. By the same token, more families have become too busy to dedicate an adult to shopping in small amounts on a daily basis. If you're buying 50 pounds of groceries and supplies at a time, you're probably going to prefer to do that by car rather than walk or use the bus. Factors like these mean that a neighborhood that had comfortable density in 1957 might be perceived as congested with cars today.

Pictures of Northampton Streets at Various Densities

Topographical Map Shows How Kohl Condo Proposal Will Eat Into a Rare Stand of Mature Trees in Downtown

Downstreet.net: Despite Tree City USA Honor Northampton Planting Lags
...developers, both residential and commercial, often regard landscaping and tree requirements as an unwarranted expense, not as a benefit to the quality of life to the city’s inhabitants...

UMass Press: "Natural Land: Preserving and Funding Open Space"
Preserving areas of nature, open space, and trees and other vegetation can have psychological as well as physical health benefits for local residents. There is a growing body of research which points to the power of nature to restore people from the stress of modern life, including mental fatigue (Kaplan, Kaplan, and Ryan 1998; Frumkin 2001).

Greening Smart Growth: The Sustainable Sites Initiative
The presence of natural elements has several implications for personal and community security. Shared green spaces, particularly those with trees, provide settings for people to interact and strengthen social ties. Residential areas with green surroundings are associated with greater social cohesion in neighborhoods, and neighbors with stronger social ties are more likely to monitor local activity, intervene if problem behaviors occur,[48] and defend their neighborhoods against crime.[49] Residents of buildings with greater tree and grass cover report fewer incidences of vandalism, graffiti, and litter than counterparts in more barren buildings.[50] Likewise, a study comparing police reports of crime and extent of tree and grass cover found that the greener a building’s surroundings, the fewer total crimes were reported.[51]

Photo Essay: 10 Reasons People Like Trees Around Them; Will the Sustainable Northampton Plan Put Urban Trees at Risk?
If you walk down North Street, imagine most trees between houses gone and replaced with a near-solid wall of housing. See the articles below, and decide if that's growth that's smart, or growth that smarts...

"Planning for Trees" by Henry Arnold, Planning Commissioners Journal, January/February 1992
A recent survey by the American Forestry Association of twenty American cities found that, on average, only one tree is planted for every four removed...

Our urban centers need to become more attractive to help counter the continuation of a sprawl pattern of development. If the appeal of low density, widely scattered development is derived from the need to be closer to nature, then making trees an integral part of the urban habitat will help make our town and city centers more desirable places to live and work. It is profoundly important to see this linkage between making cities and towns more "liveable" and stemming the continued spread of scattered development across the countryside.

"Green Enhances Growth" by Edward T. McMahon, Planning Commissioners Journal, Spring 1996
...today, tree protection ordinances are sprouting up all over the country. In California and Florida alone almost two hundred communities now have city tree ordinances...

In 1991, the [Urban Land Institute], in cooperation with the American Society of Landscape Architects, examined eleven real estate developments to assess whether money spent on site planning, landscaping, and preservation of mature trees justified the added cost of development...greenspace and landscaping translated into increased financial returns of 5 to 15 percent depending on the type of project. Landscaping also gave developers a competitive edge and increased the rate of project absorption...

[A National Association of Home Builders] report points out that "lots with trees sell for an average of 20 to 30 percent more than similarly sized lots without trees," and that "mature trees that are saved during development add more value to a lot than post construction landscaping."

...[A 1995 survey by American Lives shows] that "consumers are putting an increasingly high premium on interaction with the outdoor environment through the inclusion of wooded tracts, nature paths, and even wilderness areas in housing developments." In fact, 77 percent of consumers put "natural open space" as the feature they desired most in a new home development...

"Growing Greener: Conservation Subdivision Design" by Randall Arendt, Planning Commissioners Journal, Winter 1999
A national survey of homebuyers conducted in 1994 by American Lives revealed that of 39 features critical to their choice, homebuyers ranked "lots of natural open space" and plenty of "walking and biking paths" as the third and fourth highest rated factors affecting their decisions...

Although the groundwater impact of an individual development may not be terribly significant, the cumulative effect of hundreds of acres of native woodland and meadows being evenly graded and covered with streets, driveways, patios, rooftops, and lawns (which allow for a surprisingly high amount of runoff) can be very considerable.

"On the Value of Trees and Open Space" by Elizabeth Brabec, Planning Commissioners Journal, Summer 1993
Trees reduce air pollution by filtering dust out of the air, reduce noise and light pollution, reduce soil erosion and water run off, and aid in climate control. Research has shown that properly placed trees and landscape plantings can save 20 to 25 percent of energy use in the home for both cooling and heating...

The Ecological Cities Project: Greenspace in "The Humane Metropolis"

Rutherford Platt, "Regreening the Metropolis: Pathways to More Ecological Cities"

Portland: A Photo Tour of Spiraling Densification
...Rowhouses 1 shows some more rowhouses in a former single-family neighborhood in east Portland.


Rowhouses 1

But then planners decided even rowhouses weren't dense enough, so they began pushing for four- and five-story multifamily...

Portland, Oregon Voters Sour on Densification Over Time
...in 2002 Oregonians in Action wrote another initiative seeking to take away Metro's right to densify neighborhoods. Metro responded with its own measure halting any densification until after 2015. During the campaign, Metro supporters claimed the Oregonians in Action measure was supported by greedy speculators while Oregonians in Action asked its supporters to vote for both measures. The Metro measure received 66 percent of the vote; the Oregonians in Action measure received only 42 percent. Both sides declared victory, but it is evident that Metro submitted its own measure only because it feared to fight a battle over density...

Still, many Portlanders remain unaware of the scope of the harm planners are doing to their city.

• They resent the congestion and the so-called traffic calming projects, but they don't realize that planners are deliberately increasing congestion.
• They resent the insider deals for urban-renewal projects, but they don't realize that those projects are part of a utopian plan to get people to live in high-density housing.
• They see families with children flee Portland for Vancouver and more affordable distant suburbs, but they don't realize that unaffordable housing is the result of plans aimed at discouraging people from living in a house with a large yard.
• They worry about the $57 million hole in the Portland school budget, but they don't realize that that hole is the result of property taxes taken from the schools to subsidize transit-oriented developments.

Metro Portland's Long Experience with Smart Growth: A Cautionary Tale
Restrictive growth policies actually caused increased suburbanization in Portland, which now has the 10th greatest suburbanization rate in U.S. As home prices went up in the site-restricted metropolitan area, families moved further out to find affordable housing...

There is very little evidence that other aspects of restricted growth policies have reduced households' costs in other areas to offset the increased costs of housing. In economic terms, it is safe to say that restricted growth policies are not family-friendly...

New York Times: "Vibrant Cities Find One Thing Missing: Children" (3/24/05)
After interviewing 300 parents who had left the city, researchers at Portland State found that high housing costs and a desire for space were the top reasons...

Portland Suburb Successfully Staves Off Densification
Planners proposed to use minimum-density zoning, making it illegal to build one house on a one-acre vacant lot. Instead, if a landowner built anything at all, they would have to build at least seven houses on the acre if it were zoned for 5,000-square-foot lots and at least a 20-unit-per-acre apartment if it were zoned for 24 units per acre. This would lead to high-density infill in a low-density neighborhood, as is happening in this Gresham neighborhood, which received such zoning several years ago.

Scrape-Off Redevelopments Provoke Backlash in Denver Neighborhoods
Supporters [of lower-density zoning] said the increased density from the multiple-unit structures was ruining the character of the two neighborhoods, which are comprised of predominately single-family detached homes.

The outcropping of multifamily structures has cast shadows on gardens, increased traffic and created parking wars, among other quality of life issues, they said...

Our Column in Today's Gazette: The Hidden Risks of 'Smart Growth'
Steven Greenhut, a columnist for the Orange County Register, is critical of [Bozeman's] Portland-style growth controls:

Creating unattractive and high-density projects in a place awash in open space only pushes people farther out into the countryside. In Belgrade, eight miles away, one finds market-driven suburban-style subdivisions. That city does not have many restrictions, and those who cannot afford Bozeman or who want a bigger place simply move away, thus promoting the sprawl that Smart Growthers are trying to stop...

LA Weekly: "City Hall's 'Density Hawks' Are Changing L.A.'s DNA
The shift is pushing L.A. from its suburban model of single-family homes with gardens or pools -- the reason many come here -- toward an urban template of shrinking green patches and multistory buildings of mostly renters...

"...The deal [says Yaroslavsky] is that there are a number of developers who see an opportunity here to make a killing."

...density...breeds much more crime -- something "density hawks" never mention. A report by the National Center for Policy Analysis says crime rates in dense cities outpace by up to 20 percent the crime in more sprawling, spacious cities. So-called "smart growth" Portland and Seattle lead the pack in property crime...

LA Weekly: "What's Smart About Smart Growth?"
Real estate developers have caught on, using the phrase shamelessly to gain public support for enormous developments, from a hillside subdivision near Santa Clarita to the Westside’s Playa Vista, the massive, 5,800-home development near Marina del Rey. In a city where growth was once a dirty word, smart growth is the spoonful of sugar that suddenly makes bigness palatable...

Vancouver Sun: "Call it EcoDensity or EcoCity --either way it's a hard sell"
Despite Yaletown, almost 70 per cent of the city is single-family housing. Vancouver, essentially, remains an urban suburb. And there is a reason for this.

People love it.

They love the city's garden-like nature. They love the stability and social cohesion of a single-family neighbourhood. They like having neighbours they know...

Berkeley, California: Cautions on Infill
As noted recently in the Planet, the Berkeley Planning Department has received an infill development award from the American Planning Association (APA). How can this be? you ask. After all, Berkeley has recently been engulfed in a storm of land use controversy, a stack of lawsuits and appeals, and new Big Ugly Buildings strikingly similar to those that initiated the Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance in 1973...

...propelled by their simplistic “smart growth” philosophy, [the Planning Department] encourages developers to build the largest possible projects over neighborhood objections...

The Planning Department is well on its way to building a high-density downtown Berkeley that has almost no parking... could rapidly become a problem for our business community...

In 1990, 60 percent of New Yorkers said they would live somewhere else if they could, and in 2000, 70 percent of urbanites in Britain felt the same way. Many suburbanites commute hours every day just to have “a home, a bit of private space, and fresh air.” But unfortunately, running off to suburbia or to the wilderness to find contentment is becoming environmentally and economically unviable.

We must draw people back into relatively compact urban areas. Showcase cities that have managed to attract would-be suburbanites into increased core densities have done so through neighborhood revitalization and by giving priority to quality of life, not density. This is the opposite of what Berkeley is doing...

Renters and other high-density residents are expected to do without adequate living space, greenspace, quiet, and cars; and without cars, they lack the freedom, pleasure, and mobility taken for granted by average Americans. This is ethically unacceptable...

We cannot let planners and developers decide what we will do with our lives. I never hear planners discussing psychological health and cultural values. Planners have a different approach. As one Berkeley planner told me, no matter what they build, eventually those who can or must tolerate the new, worse environment will replace those who can’t. As this happens, resistance to further degradation lessens. But I reject this “race to the bottom.” And with enough time, planners and developers could also train Americans to live like drones in anthills—but why let them?

Smart Growth and Crime
...[Newman's] 1972 book Defensible Space...showed that the safest neighborhoods maximized private space and minimized common zones...

"The larger the number of people who share a communal space," [Newman] found, "the more difficult it is for people to identify it as being in any way theirs or to feel they have a right to control or determine the activity taking place within it."

..."I am not very impressed with the work of the New Urbanists," Newman wrote shortly before he passed away in April 2004. "It is nostalgia--a throwback to the past, with little thought about what made those environments work then (long-term occupancy by an identical economic class and ethnic group), and unworkable today. The residential environments they are creating are very vulnerable to criminal behavior, unless, of course, these environments are exclusively occupied by high-income groups."

Journal of Planning Literature: "Is it Safe to Walk? Neighborhood Safety and Security Considerations and Their Effects on Walking" (February 2006)
...The role and importance of the built environment in promoting physical activity (or at least not impeding it) is a relatively new area of research that has received increasing attention by scholars...

A 1994 U.S. Department of Transportation survey found that half of the respondents would walk or walk more if there were safe pathways and crime was not a consideration. Bauman et al. (1996) found that perceived safety was one of the most important environmental qualities for walking. In a survey that questioned Ontarians about their walking habits, Hawthorne (1989) found that safety from crime was one of the most appealing features for walking...

Studies have shown that environmental barriers to walking such as safety are high among low-income people (Craig et al. 2002), who often live in small apartments and houses with no backyards or adequate space to exercise. A national telephone survey found that twice as many low-income (31 percent) as moderate-income (15 percent) respondents identified worry about safety in their neighborhoods as an obstacle to physical activity (Moore et al. 1996 in Sallis et al. 1998)...

Seeing Like a State: Planning Gone Awry in the 20th Century
Scott critiques Brasilia, a super-modern city inspired by the concepts of Le Corbusier...

...the built environment affects those who dwell in it. Compared to life in Rio and Sao Paulo, with their color and variety, the daily round in bland, repetitive, austere Brasilia must have resembled life in a sensory deprivation tank...

...[T]here is little doubt that [Jacobs] has put her finger on the central flaws of hubris in high-modernist urban planning. The first flaw is the presumption that planners can safely make most of the predictions about the future that their schemes require... Second, thanks in part to Jacobs, we now know more about what constitutes a satisfactory neighborhood for the people who live in it, but we still know precious little about how such communities can be fostered and maintained. Working from formulas about density, green space, and transportation may produce narrowly efficient outcomes, but it is unlikely to result in a desirable place to live. Brasilia and Chandigarh, at a minimum, demonstrate this...

Once the desire for comprehensive urban planning is established, the logic of uniformity and regimentation is well-nigh inexorable. Cost effectiveness contributes to this tendency... [E]very concession to diversity is likely to entail a corresponding increase in administrative time and budgetary cost...

Scott concludes by calling for a healthy respect for diverse lifestyles and the wisdom of ordinary people. In the case of Northampton, we urge planners to respect the preferences of families with children, as this has been a major issue in other Smart Growth cities like Portland.

The power and precision of high-modernist schemes depended not only on bracketing contingency but also on standardizing the subjects of development...

This subject was singularly abstract... Standardized citizens were uniform in their needs and even interchangeable. What is striking, of course, is that such subjects--like the "unmarked citizens" of liberal theory--have, for the purposes of the planning exercise, no gender, no tastes, no history, no values, no opinions or original ideas, no traditions, and no distinctive personalities to contribute to the enterprise...

To the degree that subjects can be treated as standardized units, the power of resolution in the planning exercise is enhanced. Questions posed within these strict confines can have definitive, quantitative answers...

Smart Growth Hazard: A Confining Sameness

Smart Growth Winners (Rich People) and Losers (Other People)

Reason.org: "The Human Face of Smart Growth Opposition"
...skeptics of smart growth share many of the same concerns that its advocates have about future growth and development - traffic congestion, environmental degradation, reduced housing affordability, outdated planning codes that prevent innovative developments, to name a few. The difference is that the smart growth skeptics are not willing to buy into a "grand" solution to these challenges.

And why shouldn't they be skeptical? After nearly a century of urban planning, the latest solution to the planning mistakes of the past and challenges of today is…you guessed it...more planning. The last major urban planning fad - the nationwide urban renewal efforts of the post-WWII era - was sold with the promise of dramatically reinvigorating cities and improving urban life, but the actual result was the wholesale destruction of vibrant urban neighborhoods and the large-scale stifling of inner city economic opportunity. It is not unreasonable to be wary of the latest planning fad, especially when so much is at stake for our families and communities.

Energy-Efficient Personal Vehicles of the Near Future
Smart Growth advocates are concerned about the energy consumed by America's many cars and the emissions they produce. With gas nearing $4 a gallon, it's hard not to share these concerns. However, the solutions commonly proposed--densification to support rail and bus travel--often don't work well in practice. Many homebuyers resist being packed into dense neighborhoods where costs per square foot are high, greenspace is scarce, roads are congested and parking is hard to find. And, too, commutes by public transit typically take twice as long as commutes by car.

The May/June briefing from trendwatching.com describes how companies are working to combine the convenience and comfort of personal vehicles with the need to be gentle on the environment...