Urban design students from Notre Dame University presented Envisioning Sustainable Northampton at Northampton High School yesterday. Below are selected slides from their presentation. Download all 97 slides (PDF, 16.9MB). We will make a video of the presentation available online within a few days. In the meantime, please visit The Notre Dame Northampton Charrette website for more on the thinking behind the proposals, especially the discussion page. Over the next few days, the students will render their presentation into a book similar to the one prepared for Cooperstown, NY.




















See also:

Northampton Design Forum Website

Republican: "Students propose a future 'Hamp" (12/14/08)
The proposed transformation includes denser, tree-lined neighborhoods, more parks and common spaces and more discreet parking lots. It discourages suburban sprawl and dependency on cars.

"See how much of the frontage of this house is devoted to automobiles, instead of the people who live there?" Helfand asked, with a photo of new residential construction looming behind him.

Notre Dame Northampton Charrette Critical of Hospital Hill Plans, Fleshes Out Alternative

Video: November 13 Planning Board Meeting: Hazards Mitigation Plan; Zoning Revisions Committee; Hotel Northampton Complaint; Hospital Hill Diverging from Vision of Planned Village; Comments on Notre Dame Charrette Website

Valley Advocate: Northampton: No "Village" at Hospital Hill (6/12/08)

Update from Notre Dame; Critique of Northampton Sector Diagram

Gazette: "A long-term look at city's design: Students focus on Northampton as multiple centers" (9/12/08)
The most logical place to put compact growth in practice is at intersections of major streets that would serve as the center of neighborhoods, Bess said...

Notre Dame Pitches Urban Design Studio to Northampton

Video: Notre Dame Urban Design Studio Presentation

Video: Design Northampton Week Opening Presentation

Design Northampton Week: Full Schedule and Handout from Opening Presentation
This handout provided by Notre Dame (PDF) includes  "Ten Characteristics of Good Traditional Towns and Neighborhoods", "What's Wrong With Sprawl?", "The Rural-to-Urban Transect", "What Is a Charrette?", "Charter of the New Urbanism", and "The Asphalt Rebellion: Vibrant and beautiful, not fast and ugly".

Complete Slides from Northampton Design Week Opening Presentation

Video: First public "in-process" presentation and feedback session for Design Northampton Week
Fran Volkmann, Vice Chair, Community Preservation Committee
1:09:26-1:10:57
We would like to concentrate development closer in, we like the idea of walkability, bikeability, neighborhood center... The thing that happens to us, however, is that we buy that and then somebody builds some horrible thing...and then they say to you, "This is infill, you know. It's good, it's infill." ...You know if you walk in European cities, you very often find little tiny pocket parks, and little bits of green spaces, mixed in with beautiful buildings... How do we...learn to...value...respect for people at the same time that we try to fill in our park spaces?

Video: Second public "in-process" presentation and feedback session for Design Northampton Week

Video: Third public "in-process" presentation and feedback session for Design Northampton Week

Video: Fourth public "in-process" presentation and feedback session for Design Northampton Week

Video and Slides: Final Presentation of Design Northampton Week

The pleasing appearance of the northern portion of Pleasant Street--built before 1950--is contrasted with southern Pleasant Street:

An old court house is contrasted with a new one:

The old Post Office is contrasted with the new one:

The old jail is contrasted with the more recent police station:

Smart Growth vs. "Smart Growth"


 
As Daryl LaFleur observes, "the Kohl North Street area development proposal includes row house condominiums set to the rear of parking lots, not free standing detached single family homes that front the 'street', which would better match the existing neighborhood and is also a tenet of Smart Growth."

Today's Urban Planning Debates Echoed in Northampton's Near Past

Rutherford Platt in Gazette: Avoid Overplanning (9/7/08)

Grasping the Sustainable Northampton Vision: We Need Pictures
In all the 78 pages of the draft Sustainable Northampton Plan (PDF), there is only a single graphic. It's the Future Land Use Map, an abstract, top-level view of the city. That's unfortunate, because without drawings, pictures and illustrations, it's difficult to envision how the Plan will change the look and feel of Northampton. James Kunstler, an advocate of New Urbanism, discusses this problem in "Home From Nowhere", published in the September 1996 issue of The Atlantic Monthly:

The object of the charette [public design workshop] is not, however, to produce verbiage but to produce results on paper in the form of drawings and plans. This highlights an essential difference between zoning codes and traditional town planning based on civic art. Zoning codes are invariably twenty-seven-inch-high stacks of numbers and legalistic language that few people other than technical specialists understand. Because this is so, local zoning- and planning-board members frequently don't understand their own zoning laws. Zoning has great advantages for specialists, namely lawyers and traffic engineers, in that they profit financially by being the arbiters of the regulations, or benefit professionally by being able to impose their special technical needs (say, for cars) over the needs of citizens -- without the public's being involved in their decisions.

Traditional town planning produces pictorial codes that any normal citizen can comprehend. This is democratic and ethical as well as practical. It elevates the quality of the public discussion about development. People can see what they're talking about. Such codes show a desired outcome at the same time that they depict formal specifications. They're much more useful than the reams of balderdash found in zoning codes.

Springfield Works on Infill Housing Design Guidelines; Residential Design Presentation by Dietz & Company

Tailoring Infill and the New Urbanism to Northampton
The North Street Neighborhood Association is not opposed to all infill per se. The "new urbanism" has many appealing features, but three cautions come to mind.

First, due to Northampton's chronic flooding issues, the proportion of impervious surface in a neighborhood should be closely monitored. A front lawn may not be as "useless" as it looks, and it can add privacy and quiet to a home. Second, urban heat island effects should be considered if a neighborhood is at risk of losing greenspace. Third, any transition from one zoning regime to another should be gradual, to avoid sudden property tax increases and to evaluate the effects of the new regime as they unfold, in case adjustments are needed.