[11/13/08 update - Notre Dame Professor Philip Bess sent us this comment and authorized us to share it with you:

We share your commitment to green space in Northampton, both usable and preserved; and are cognizant of the low-lying downtown areas prone to flooding. I just want to reassure you here that even if our concern for these issues is not immediately apparent to you now, we view nature preserves and properly planned parks and squares and streets as integral to good urban design; and this will be apparent in our final presentation. Please note too that the colored zones of our sector diagram refer to long-term suggestions for both the preservation of natural and agricultural land and the location of future development. We have no specific recommendations as to how these goals should be implemented, a subject and process which are concerns for the people of Northampton to address and resolve among yourselves.]

The Northampton Design Forum announced the following update today:

Greetings from South Bend,

The Notre Dame urban design studio has been hard at work since our charrette in September. We've been refining our ideas, creating new plans, and illustrating them with more perspective views. We presented all of this at our mid-term review, which was attended by several guests from Northampton, but we want to make sure everyone has a chance to see our progress and give us feedback, so we've uploaded all of our recent work on to our website.

http://sites.google.com/site/northamptoncharrette/

Please take a look and let us know what you think. We still have a lot of work to do before the end of the semester, so now is the chance for you to influence the direction we take in the next month. No suggestions are too small or too large, so send us an email with your thoughts.(notredamenorthampton@gmail.com). We look forward to hearing from you.

- The Notre Dame Studio

This Sector Diagram (Intervention Strategy) on the charrette website is particularly interesting, even as it gives cause for concern:



The light green areas are tagged "no further development". Two concerns immediately arise. First, property owners in the light green areas might object to being shut down so completely. Second, without careful protection for greenspace in the orange and white areas, developers might perceive an open invitation to concrete these spaces over. Not only will this make in-town areas less pleasant and attractive, it will increase flooding risk, as the orange and white areas include some of the most low-lying parts of the city.

These charts show the degree to which impervious surface already overspreads the "receiving areas". The first chart is from OLIVER, The MassGIS Online Data Viewer. The second chart was prepared by Northampton's Office of Planning and Development.






Greenspace is an important amenity for many homebuyers. If in-town living comes to be seen as less desirable, it is plausible that these buyers will engage in "leapfrog sprawl", finding their greenspace in neighboring towns, and potentially increasing their car use. The bottom line is, if you want people to live near downtown, you need to ensure it's an attractive option for a broad range of people.


See also:

Video and Slides: Final Presentation of Design Northampton Week

Complete Slides from Northampton Design Week Opening Presentation

Flooding is already affecting Northampton's built-up areas during major storms

[Flood damage reports from Tropical Storm Floyd pepper downtown Northampton (1999). Note most of the red flags are outside the traditional 100-year floodplain. This is a sign that Northampton's stormwater management systems are stretched even under the existing wetlands buffer zone regime. We object to ratcheting up the pressure on our in-town wetlands, a key part of our natural drainage system.]



New Hazards Mitigation Plan Reflects Weakened Protection for Wetlands
"...it is forecasted that, Massachusetts, and the rest of New England, is long overdue for a major hurricane to make landfall. Based on past hurricane and tropical storm landfalls, the frequency of tropical systems to hit the Massachusetts coastline is an average of once out of every six years." (p.28)

Northampton's Flood and Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan: Floyd Flood Damage Reported Behind View Avenue; Avoid Building on Filled Wetlands (emphasis added)
...Northampton can experience flooding in any part of the City. One great misunderstanding is the belief that floods only happen in the floodplain. With sufficient rain, almost any area will experience at least pockets of surface flooding or overland flooding. Overland flooding in rural areas can result in erosion, washouts, road damage, loss of crops and septic system back-ups. Heavy rain in the more urbanized parts of the City with extensive paved and impervious surfaces can easily overwhelm stormwater facilities resulting in localized flooding and basement damage. Stormwater flooding also contributes to water pollution by carrying silt, oil, fertilizers, pesticides and waste into streams, rivers and lakes. As the intensity of development continues to increase, Northampton will see a corresponding increase in serious stormwater problems. It is therefore important that the City as a whole, not just residents of the identified floodplain, address the need for mitigation. Flood and hazard mitigation is any preventive actions a community can take to reduce risks to people and property and minimize damage to structures, infrastructure and other resources from flood or other hazardous events. Hazard mitigation and loss prevention is not the same thing as emergency response. Some flood loss reduction can be achieved by components of response plans and preparedness plans, such as a flood warning system or a plan to evacuate flood prone areas. However, warning and evacuation deal only with the immediate needs during and following a flood event. Hazard mitigation is much more effective when it is directed toward reducing the need to respond to emergencies, by lessening the impact of the hazard ahead of time. (Massachusetts Department of Environmental Management 1997, 3)...

The Economic Value of Wetlands: Wetlands’ Role in Flood Protection in Western Washington
...Episodic flooding along rivers and streams in the lowlands of Western Washington has become a recurrent theme of recent years. Development practices that eliminate or compromise natural systems capable of controlling runoff appear to be exacerbating flooding problems in many areas. This highlights the importance of the remaining natural systems capable of attenuating flood flows, particularly wetlands, in the region’s defenses against increasingly destructive floods...

EPA: Urban Heat Islands
The term "heat island" refers to urban air and surface temperatures that are higher than nearby rural areas. Many U.S. cities and suburbs have air temperatures up to 10°F (5.6°C) warmer than the surrounding natural land cover.

The heat island sketch pictured here shows a city's heat island profile. It demonstrates how urban temperatures are typically lower at the urban-rural border than in dense downtown areas. The graphic also show how parks, open land, and bodies of water can create cooler areas....

Suburban 'Raise the Drawbridge' Sentiment Motivates Some Smart Growth Policies
Steven Greenhut, a columnist for the Orange County Register, says that Smart Growth policies that ignore people's living preferences will fail and make things worse (11/23/04):

Bozeman is an interesting case study because it is small and because the Smart Growthers have strong control of the city...

...the real problem is that city and county officials are trying to stop suburban growth around the city by imposing Portland-style growth controls. Officials insist that new developments are far more densely packed than the market demands...

On a practical level, these Smart Growth policies are counterproductive. Restricting growth in the city, or creating unattractive 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...

Photo Essay: 10 Reasons People Like Trees Around Them; Will the Sustainable Northampton Plan Put Urban Trees at Risk?
"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...

"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.

Berkeley, California: Cautions on Infill
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.”

New York Times: "Vibrant Cities Find One Thing Missing: Children"
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, Oregon Voters Sour on Densification Over Time

Smart Growth with Balance: The American Planning Association
All development -- including redevelopment, infill development, and new construction in urbanizing areas -- should plan for biodiversity and incorporate green infrastructure. Green infrastructure helps to maintain natural ecosystems, including clean air and water; reduces wildlife habitat fragmentation, pollution, and other threats to biodiversity. It also improves the quality of life for people.

UMass Press: "Natural Land: Preserving and Funding Open Space"
Protecting open space is often about protecting what makes a community special and unique... At the small-town or village scale, a forested hillside or surrounding farmland helps create a unique sense of place. Furthermore, preserving open space helps to create distinct edges that stop the blurring of community boundaries that is characteristic of urban sprawl. Defining what is unique about one's community and identifying places that are special to local residents is an important part of the overall planning process (Hester 1990)...

The Ecological Cities Project: Greenspace in "The Humane Metropolis"
A metropolis (i.e., metro region or citistate) is considered green if it fosters humans' connections to the natural world -- an idea Anne Whiston Spirn promoted in her seminal 1984 book The Granite Garden. Spirn rejected the idea -- easily absorbed if one watches too many "concrete jungle'' films, or even televised nature documentaries -- that the natural world begins beyond the urban fringe. "Nature in the city,'' she wrote, "must be cultivated, like a garden, rather than ignored or subdued.''

Rutherford Platt, "Regreening the Metropolis: Pathways to More Ecological Cities"
In the 1950s, the conventional wisdom--for the affluent at least--was that cities are where people are, and the country is where you go on weekends and vacations to find Nature in some place bucolic or maritime. But today, even for those who can afford it, the time and cost of escaping the metropolis has grown with the spread of the metropolis itself and the growing numbers of vehicles trying to leave it... Meanwhile, those who cannot afford to sit in traffic in their SUV--the poor, the elderly, the infirm--are sentenced to live out their lives in the metropolitan environment, come what may...

...cities and metropolitan areas, now too large to conveniently escape, must themselves be viewed as incorporating both built and unbuilt environments... And into the bargain, the urban environment will prove to be more habitable, more sustainable, more "ecological"...