North Street Neighborhood Association

Developer Douglas Kohl of Northampton dies after liver transplant surgery

NorthAssocAdmin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:35:00 GMT

The Gazette reports today on its website:

Area businessman and developer Douglas Kohl died Wednesday, according to email messages circulated by relatives and friends.

Kohl, 51, of Summer Street in Northampton, experienced complications after receiving a new liver in a transplant performed at a New York City hospital.

Continues

Video: District Attorney Candidates Debate; Jason Vassell Case

NorthAssocAdmin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:51:00 GMT

Here is a complete blip.tv video of the 9/1/10 debate between the Democratic candidates for Northwestern district attorney, Michael Cahillane and David Sullivan. The debate was sponsored by the Daily Hampshire Gazette, The Recorder, Northampton Community Television and WHMP. It took place in the community room of JFK Middle School. This video is 1 hour 22 minutes long and was recorded by Adam Cohen.

Here is a 7-minute YouTube excerpt from the middle of the debate where the candidates discuss how the Jason Vassell case was handled.

See also:

Gazette: "Debate centers on skills: Rivals for DA skirmish again" (9/3/10)
Referring to the 2008 case of Jason Vassell, an African-American and then-student at the University of Massachusetts who was charged with stabbing two white men after they allegedly berated him with racial insults, Sullivan said the district attorney's office had wasted resources on prosecuting Vassell and exercised "an absolute lack of judgment." The case was dismissed earlier this summer.

Cahillane countered that Vassell was held after the district attorney's office filed a motion for a dangerousness hearing, in which it is decided whether a person should be held or released. That motion was upheld by a judge, he noted.

"The job of the district attorney is to stand up for victims," he said, "and in this situation I made the decision based on the facts that I know at that point. What I knew is that there were two people in the hospital who had been stabbed."

Gazette: "The 2010 Northwestern district attorney's race"
After nearly two decades, Northwestern District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel is retiring -- and that has led to the first contested race for Northwestern district attorney in 28 years. Democrat Michael A. Cahillane, a prosecutor in the DA's office for 10 years until he resigned in June to campaign, and fellow Democrat Dave Sullivan, an experienced local attorney and Hampshire County's register of probate since 2002, are facing off in a Sept. 14 primary that will effectively decide Scheibel's successor. Here, you'll find GazetteNET's comprehensive coverage as the race continues to heat up.

MassLive: "Northwestern DA Democratic candidates Michael Cahillane, David Sullivan debate child abuse, casinos, gay marriage" (9/1/10)
The two Democratic candidates for Northwestern district attorney took on issues including child abuse, casino gambling, gay marriage and openness Wednesday in their latest debate at the John F. Kennedy Middle School.

MassLive: "Western Massachusetts District Attorney race recap: Keep up with our coverage"

Video: Cahillane Debates Sullivan for Northwestern District Attorney (8/28/10)

MassLive: "Northwestern DA candidates Michael Cahillane, David Sullivan joust over who has better skill set" (8/24/10)

Call For Nominations For The Ward 3 Board Of Directors

NorthAssocAdmin — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:05:00 GMT

A message from the Ward 3 Neighborhood Association:

Call For Nominations For The Ward 3 Board Of Directors

Hello from the Vice-President's office!

This year has been a busy one for the Ward 3 Neighborhood Association. Since our previous annual meeting we have experienced the terrible fires of late 2009 and the vast, gracious support from the community to raise money for the victims and their families. We sponsored the start-up of the Northampton Neighborhood Watch, which held its first major event in August. We held our first fundraiser for the association, the Vegetable Garden Tour. It's been a year of growth and expansion.

At our annual meeting in October, we will elect new board members. Every position is filled on an annual basis, elected by the current year's members at the board meeting. We need new board members! As with many organizations, we have a roster of current board members who are willing to run again for a position. However, we want and need fresh ideas and new board members too! We need active members from both precincts to be board members. Please consider running-- and write to me at OwenFD@gmail.com if you're interested. Of course you can always conduct a floor nomination at the annual meeting as well, but an early nomination helps me prepare the ballots.

The Ward 3 Neighborhood Association board is a vital part of the organization and meets regularly on the second Tuesday of each month at 7 PM. The board authorizes committees and plans events for the association. Occasionally, the board takes a position on an issue relating to the city and ward 3 specifically. Please write to me at OwenFD@gmail.com if you're interested in any of the positions:

Board Member

Alternate Board Member (votes only when a board member is absent)

Business Representative

Treasurer

Secretary

Vice-President

President

Even if you're just considering a position (and are not sure you want to run) contact me and we can talk about it.

Owen Freeman-Daniels
Woodmont Road

P.S. Below is a selection of the Bylaws (which can be found here) for the roles and responsibilities of a board member:

A Ward 3 Board Member is elected to his or her seat at our annual meeting (open to the public) or by the Ward 3 Board to fill an opening due to a resignation. As a Board Member, one is afforded, one vote in Association matters. A Board Member's election is effective for one year or until the next annual meeting. A Board Member is in no way bound to represent the positions of the Board of Directors of the Ward 3 Neighborhood Association, or its City Councilor, and is free to hold his or her own position on city matters.

Responsibilities:
A Board Member serves the Association by attending monthly meeting. A Board Member will assist the Association with creating a more informed and active ward. A Board Member is encouraged to participate on an Association sub-committee. A Board Member provides informed opinion and advice concerning city issues. A Board Member makes efforts to seek out views of their neighbors. A Board Member makes efforts to disseminate information from the Association to their neighbors. A Board Member supports Association events and activities.

Video: Cahillane Debates Sullivan for Northwestern District Attorney

NorthAssocAdmin — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 13:00:00 GMT

Here is a complete blip.tv video of the 8/24/10 debate between the two Democratic candidatates for Northwestern District Attorney, Michael Cahillane and David Sullivan. This video is 1 hour 9 minutes long and was recorded by Lachlan Ziegler.

The Daily Hampshire Gazette will host a debate between the two candidates on September 1 at JFK Middle School on Bridge Road. Northampton Community Television will broadcast the debate live at 7 pm.

See also:

NCTV Video: "Northwest Mass DA Candidate's Debate August 24, 2010"

MassLive: "Northwestern DA candidates Michael Cahillane, David Sullivan joust over who has better skill set" (8/24/10)
Early on in the 90-minute debate in the Garden House at Look Park, the two candidates introduced their respective selling points that would be woven throughout the program.

For Cahillane, that meant emphasizing his 10 years as a prosecutor, first in district court and then superior court, and his experience with several difficult cases over the years and working in close contact with local police departments...

For Sullivan, it meant saying that that the district attorney’s office under the tenure of Elizabeth D. Scheibel has had some missteps and how his experience as a manager would make the office run better.

Gazette: "The 2010 Northwestern district attorney's race"
After nearly two decades, Northwestern District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel is retiring -- and that has led to the first contested race for Northwestern district attorney in 28 years. Democrat Michael A. Cahillane, a prosecutor in the DA's office for 10 years until he resigned in June to campaign, and fellow Democrat Dave Sullivan, an experienced local attorney and Hampshire County's register of probate since 2002, are facing off in a Sept. 14 primary that will effectively decide Scheibel's successor. Here, you'll find GazetteNET's comprehensive coverage as the race continues to heat up.

Video: City Council Meeting of 8/19/10; Upper Roberts Meadow Dam; Extended Producer Responsibility

NorthAssocAdmin — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 00:08:00 GMT

Here is a complete blip.tv video of the 8/19/10 meeting of Northampton's City Council. Download the agenda (PDF). This meeting includes a discussion of preserving Upper Roberts Meadow Dam (see the public comment period at the beginning of the meeting and then the councilors' debate during 0:38:50-2:01:22 on the video) and promoting a waste-reduction initiative, Extended Producer Responsibility. The EPR presentation takes place during 2:01:30-2:30:10. There was also a controversy during the Finance Committee portion of the meeting over fire department stipends for medical calls (see special video excerpt).

Note that blip.tv now lets you skip around recordings, so you don't have to view an entire video in sequence. Just click on the timeline to where you want to go. This complete video is 3 hours 35 minutes long and was recorded by Adam Cohen.

This board was displayed by The Friends of the Upper Roberts Meadow Reservoir as part of a presentation by Joe Misterka:

See also:

Video: Gene Tacy Challenges Mayor on Fire Department Stipends for Medical Calls
Ward 7 City Councilor Gene Tacy says the Fire Department's most recent contract gives each member $14.06 for each medical call they respond to, in addition to their regular compensation. In aggregate, these stipends add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

In the Finance Committee portion of last night's City Council meeting, Tacy says he feels the stipend is excessive and unusual in Western Massachusetts. Mayor Clare Higgins responds that she would like to discuss the matter in executive session, as she feels it is a collective bargaining issue.

Here is a 9-minute YouTube video of this part of the City Council meeting.

Website: Save the Chesterfield Road Dam

CommonWealth: "Cheap, clean energy stirring interest in Holyoke"

LaBarge, Spector and Tacy Propose Resolution to Preserve Upper Roberts Meadow Dam (8/13/10)

Video Highlights: BPW on the Dam, Landfill (6/30/10)
In this first 7-minute segment, Ward 7 City Councilor Gene Tacy urges the Board to support hydropower generation on the Mill River system. A network of hydro stations at several dams could collectively generate hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of green electricity per year, and the Upper Roberts Meadow dam and reservoir could be preserved. John Clapp and Dee Boyle-Clapp of Save Our Dam then debate with Board Chair Terry Culhane about whether the friends of the dam are making the progress the Board wants to see.

Gazette: "Advocates dig in to save Northampton dam" (6/30/10)

Video: Board of Public Works Not Keen to Save Chesterfield Road Dam (6/12/10)

Northampton Media: "Dueling Engineers: Can Micro-Hydro Save the Dam?" (5/15/10)

MassDEP: "Draft 2010-2020 Solid Waste Master Plan: A Pathway to Zero Waste" (7/1/10)

Solid Waste Management Alternatives Study (PDF, 2.7MB)

Key Portions of the Solid Waste Management Alternatives Study

Video and Slides: Public Forum on Innovative Approaches to Manage Northampton's Solid Waste, 11/19/08
City Engineer Jim Laurila gave a presentation on Northampton's current solid waste management program (PDF, 54KB). He was followed by Gary Liss of Gary Liss & Associates ("Zero Waste to Cool the Planet", PDF, 975KB) and Alan Cohen of HDR ("Innovative Approaches to Managing Northampton's Solid Waste", PDF, 5.9MB). The presentations were followed by comments from the public and from members of the Board of Public Works.

Valley Advocate: "Trash is Good" (10/9/08)
In the landfill business, trash is good. Currently Northampton's Solid Waste Enterprise Fund relies on 45,000 to 50,000 tons per year in order to meet budget. If Pioneer Valley residents significantly reduce what they throw away, the city may move to expand the landfill's "wasteshed"--that is, to entice tonnage from other areas. If another regional facility offers haulers a cheaper alternative, this strategy may fail. Duseau Trucking has a permit to operate a transfer station in North Hatfield, with rail access. If, for instance, Duseau were able to ship our region's trash to another facility at a lower cost, it is possible that the Northampton municipal landfill would end up cash-starved...

Video: Gene Tacy Challenges Mayor on Fire Department Stipends for Medical Calls

NorthAssocAdmin — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 11:50:00 GMT

Ward 7 City Councilor Gene Tacy says the Fire Department's most recent contract gives each member $14.06 for each medical call they respond to, in addition to their regular compensation. In aggregate, these stipends add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

In the Finance Committee portion of last night's City Council meeting, Tacy says he feels the stipend is excessive and unusual in Western Massachusetts. Mayor Clare Higgins responds that she would like to discuss the matter in executive session, as she feels it is a collective bargaining issue.

Here is a 9-minute YouTube video of this part of the City Council meeting. This video was recorded by Adam Cohen.

Selected quotes from the video:

Councilor Gene Tacy: "I thought I was reading the bonuses for Fortune 500 companies..."

Mayor Clare Higgins: "With all due respect councilor, the council is not involved in collective bargaining... Do you want to talk about should they [the stipends] be lowered?"

Tacy: "Absolutely."

Higgins: "...The council does not bargain the contracts. I come to you for advice, and I'm happy to do that in an executive session."

Tacy: "...I researched every city and town in Western Massachusetts--South Hadley, Westfield, Agawam, Ludlow, all of them---and none of them offer this... It just seemed like profit sharing to me..."

Higgins: "...This is the prerogative of the executive. If you're opposed to it, you should vote down the budget, and you should vote against the transfers, and then I would have to go find the money somewhere else..."

Tacy: "...I read the contract as though we're giving away the store here..."

We'll publish a video of the complete City Council meeting within a few days.

See also:

Bucket Loader Documents; Parking Meter Receipts May Be Used for General Municipal Purposes (2/23/10)
[Northampton Media:] Ward 7 Councilor Eugene Tacy, Ward 3 Councilor Angela Plassmann, and Ward 6 Councilor Marianne LaBarge are openly opposing the appropriation, and have said that the bucket loader represents an unnecessary expenditure during tough economic times...

CommonWealth: "Cheap, clean energy stirring interest in Holyoke"

NorthAssocAdmin — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 19:55:00 GMT

As a resolution to preserve Upper Roberts Meadow Dam comes before Northampton's City Council tomorrow, it's worth noting how locally-produced green energy helped Holyoke attract its upcoming high-performance computing center. Bruce Mohl writes for CommonWealth magazine:

Cheap, clean energy stirring interest in Holyoke (7/27/10)

Holyoke, one of the poorest cities in Massachusetts, hasn’t attracted any significant business development in a long time. But companies are starting to show interest in the old mill town because its municipal utility has something they want: electricity that—because it’s predominantly hydro and nuclear—is the cheapest in New England and largely carbon-free.

A consortium of high-profile universities and companies is planning to open an $80 million high-performance computing center in downtown Holyoke in late 2012 that will connect to the campuses using existing fiber optic lines. The center is expected to use 7.5 megawatts of electricity initially, growing to 15 megawatts after five years, or nearly a quarter of the existing electricity load of the city of 40,000 people...

Lavelle said Holyoke will sell power to the computing center at the industrial rate of 8.4 cents per kilowatt hour, the lowest in New England and less than half of what it would cost in Boston and Cambridge. Price is not the only selling point. Lavelle says the municipal utility produces on average 100 pounds of carbon dioxide for every megawatt hour of electricity it generates; the New England average is 10 times as much, or 1,000 pounds per megawatt, he says...

Claude Canizares, vice president for research at MIT, said the university was starting to run out of computing space two years ago when it began reviewing its options. It came across Holyoke and liked the fact that the city offered cheap, clean power, had access to fiber optic lines, and was located at a New England crossroads, the intersection of the Massachusetts Turnpike and I-91.

Click for the full article

See also:

Website: Save the Chesterfield Road Dam

LaBarge, Spector and Tacy Propose Resolution to Preserve Upper Roberts Meadow Dam (8/13/10)

Video Highlights: BPW on the Dam, Landfill (6/30/10)
In this first 7-minute segment, Ward 7 City Councilor Gene Tacy urges the Board to support hydropower generation on the Mill River system. A network of hydro stations at several dams could collectively generate hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of green electricity per year, and the Upper Roberts Meadow dam and reservoir could be preserved. John Clapp and Dee Boyle-Clapp of Save Our Dam then debate with Board Chair Terry Culhane about whether the friends of the dam are making the progress the Board wants to see.

Gazette: "Advocates dig in to save Northampton dam" (6/30/10)

Video: Board of Public Works Not Keen to Save Chesterfield Road Dam (6/12/10)

Northampton Media: "Dueling Engineers: Can Micro-Hydro Save the Dam?" (5/15/10)

Joel Kotkin: "Urban Legends: Why suburbs, not cities, are the answer"

NorthAssocAdmin — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 12:44:00 GMT

This week in Foreign Policy, Joel Kotkin challenges the notion that bigger is always better when it comes to cities.

Urban Legends

The human world is fast becoming an urban world -- and according to many, the faster that happens and the bigger the cities get, the better off we all will be. The old suburban model, with families enjoying their own space in detached houses, is increasingly behind us; we're heading toward heavier reliance on public transit, greater density, and far less personal space...

...here's what the boosters don't tell you: It's far less clear whether the extreme centralization and concentration advocated by these new urban utopians is inevitable -- and it's not at all clear that it's desirable...

All [of today's megacities] suffer growing income inequality and outward migration of middle-class families. Even in the best of circumstances, the new age of the megacity might well be an era of unparalleled human congestion and gross inequality...

Innovators of all kinds seek to avoid the high property prices, overcrowding, and often harsh anti-business climates of the city center. Britain's recent strides in technology and design-led manufacturing have been concentrated not in London, but along the outer reaches of the Thames Valley and the areas around Cambridge... And let's not forget that Silicon Valley, the granddaddy of global tech centers and still home to the world's largest concentration of high-tech workers, remains essentially a vast suburb...

In fact, the suburbs are not as terrible as urban boosters frequently insist.

Consider the environment. We tend to associate suburbia with carbon dioxide-producing sprawl and urban areas with sustainability and green living. But though it's true that urban residents use less gas to get to work than their suburban or rural counterparts, when it comes to overall energy use the picture gets more complicated. Studies in Australia and Spain have found that when you factor in apartment common areas, second residences, consumption, and air travel, urban residents can easily use more energy than their less densely packed neighbors. Moreover, studies around the world -- from Beijing and Rome to London and Vancouver -- have found that packed concentrations of concrete, asphalt, steel, and glass produce what are known as "heat islands", generating 6 to 10 degrees Celsius more heat than surrounding areas and extending as far as twice a city's political boundaries.

When it comes to inequality, cities might even be the problem. In the West, the largest cities today also tend to suffer the most extreme polarization of incomes. In 1980, Manhattan ranked 17th among U.S. counties for income disparity; by 2007 it was first, with the top fifth of wage earners earning 52 times what the bottom fifth earned...

Cities often offer a raw deal for the working class, which ends up squeezed by a lethal combination of chronically high housing costs and chronically low opportunity in economies dominated by finance and other elite industries...

Even the widely cited 2009 World Bank report on megacities, a staunchly pro-urban document, acknowledges that as societies become wealthier, they inevitably begin to deconcentrate, with the middle classes moving to the periphery. Urban population densities have been on the decline since the 19th century, Angel notes, as people have sought out cheaper and more appealing homes beyond city limits. In fact, despite all the "back to the city" hype of the past decade, more than 80 percent of new metropolitan growth in the United States since 2000 has been in suburbs.

And that's not such a bad thing. Ultimately, dispersion -- both city to suburb and megacity to small city -- holds out some intriguing solutions to current urban problems. The idea took hold during the initial golden age of industrial growth -- the English 19th century -- when suburban "garden cities" were established around London's borders...

Delore Zimmerman, of the North Dakota-based Praxis Strategy Group, has helped foster high-tech-oriented development in small towns and cities from the Red River Valley in North Dakota and Minnesota to the Wenatchee region in Washington State. The outcome has been promising: Both areas are reviving from periods of economic and demographic decline...

The goal of urban planners should not be to fulfill their own grandiose visions of megacities on a hill, but to meet the needs of the people living in them, particularly those people suffering from overcrowding, environmental misery, and social inequality.

Click for the full article

See also:

Boston Globe: "The growth of a thoughtful city" (8/16/10)
...When I get back from China I no longer take it for granted that I can walk with my kids down our street past trees, yards, and lawns to a park with a playground in it...

Randal O'Toole: "Dense Thinkers" (Reason Magazine, January 1999)
The "decline" of cities that officials worry so much about is due to the fact that cars, telephones, and electricity make it possible for people to live in lower densities--and most choose to do so...

"Sprawl and Smart Growth" (PDF) by Jane S. Shaw
Senior Associate, Political Economy Research Center, Bozeman, MT
Sprawl reflects prosperity and the decisions of many people who seek large homes on large lots in areas with low crime, good schools, and space for ball fields. As Gregg Easterbrook wrote in the New Republic, “Sprawl is caused by affluence and population growth, and which of these, exactly, do we propose to prohibit?”

...One of the goals of the “smart growth” platform is to increase population density. The idea is that if people live close to one another and near shops and jobs they will do more walking and biking. In fact, however, the more people there are in an area, the greater the traffic congestion because most people continue to use their cars.

NY Times Magazine: "The Autonomist Manifesto (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Road)"
Even with $5-per-gallon gasoline, the number of cars per capita in Europe has been growing faster than in America in recent decades, while the percentage of commuters using mass transit has been falling. As the suburbs expand, Europe's cities have been losing people, too. Paris is a great place to visit, but in the past half-century it has lost one-quarter of its population...

Intellectuals' distaste for the car and suburbia, and their fondness for rail travel and cities, are an odd inverse of the old aristocratic attitudes. The suburbs were quite fashionable when only the upper classes could afford to live there...

Some...especially the young and the childless, are moving back to cities, and once again there are private developers ready to meet their desires, which now run toward lofts and historic town houses with modern kitchens. But for most middle-class families, the ideal of city life conflicts with the reality of their own lives. Even if they're willing to do without a yard, how can they afford to live in a decent neighborhood within easy commute of their jobs? How will they go shopping on a rainy day with a child in tow?

Governing: "Growing America: Demographics and Destiny"
Americans...prefer to live in decentralized environments. There are more than 65,000 general-purpose governments; the average local jurisdiction population in the United States is 6,200--small enough that nonprofessional politicians can have a serious impact on local issues. This contrasts with the vast preference among academic planners, policy gurus and the national media for larger government units as the best way to regulate and plan for the future.

Short of a draconian expansion of federal power, this dispersion is likely to continue. Roughly 80 to 90 percent of all metropolitan growth in the last decade took place on the periphery; at the same time, the patterns of domestic migration have seen a shift away from the biggest cities and toward smaller ones. As Joel Garreau noted in his classic Edge City, "planners drool" over high-density development, but most residents in suburbia "hate a lot of this stuff." They might enjoy a town center, a paseo or a walking district, but they usually resent the proliferation of high-rises or condo complexes. If they wanted to live in buildings like them, they would have stayed in the city.

...As one planning director in a well-to-do suburban Maryland county put it, "Smart growth is something people want. They just don't want it in their own neighborhood."

The great long-term spur to successful dispersion will come from technology, as James Martin first saw in his pioneering 1978 book, The Wired Society. A former software designer for IBM, Martin foresaw the emergence of mass telecommunications that would allow a massive reduction in commuting, greater deconcentration of workplaces and a "localization of physical activities...centered in local communities."

...Simultaneously the Internet's rise allows every business--indeed every family--unprecedented access to information, something that militates against centralized power. Given Internet access, many lay people aren't easily intimidated into accepting the ability of "experts" to dictate solutions based on exclusive knowledge since the hoi polloi now possess the ability to gather and analyze information...

Berkeley, California: Cautions on Infill
Citizen input into long-range planning is excellent—which is why citizens are so astonished when their plans are entirely ignored by the current Planning Division. Developers sometimes work successfully with neighbors to create good and popular developments, but a long list of appeals, lawsuits, and despised large developments indicates a major problem. Staff routinely stonewalls, obfuscates, refuses to respond, and ignores neighborhood concerns. In contradiction to our own ordinances, staff makes no genuine attempt to facilitate cooperation between applicants and neighbors. Instead, propelled by their simplistic “smart growth” philosophy, staff encourages developers to build the largest possible projects over neighborhood objections...

"Power at the Local Level: Growth Coalition Theory"
...local power structures are land-based growth coalitions. They seek to intensify land use. They are opposed by the neighborhoods they invade or pollute, and by environmentalists...

The growth coalitions also have a well-crafted set of rationales, created over the course of many decades, to justify their actions to the general public...

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....

Energy Intensity Less in Single-Family Homes Than High-Rises
So why might this be? The San Francisco Bay Guardian explains (10/31/07):

...high-rises use energy in ways that single-family homes don't — for example, in thousands of elevator trips from top to bottom every day. According to a study found on the US Department of Energy's Web site, elevators consume up to 10 percent of the total energy used to maintain tall buildings. Furthermore, these buildings are usually climate controlled (in part to counteract the heat created by their elevators), whereas opening and closing windows can more effectively regulate temperatures in single-family houses and low-rise units. High-rise buildings also include common areas that often leave lights burning 24 hours a day.

Other reasons for higher energy intensities in residential high-rises can include "parking garage fans and a building code requirement that building air must be completely exchanged every three hours – air that must be heated in winter and cooled in summer." (Energy Solutions Alberta)

We also speculate that costs that are borne by an entire complex, such as lighting and heating common areas, may be less closely monitored than costs that fall on a single household. Since turning down your personal thermostat is simple and will directly save you money, you're more likely to do it than lobby your building managers to make the common areas colder.

Maybe John and Jen Homeowner who like a house with a yard aren't such bad folks after all.

Summer Thunderstorm Pressures Stormwater Infrastructure

NorthAssocAdmin — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 20:46:00 GMT

This afternoon's thunderstorm pressured Northampton's downtown storm drains. Police closed the North Street underpass after a car began floating and had to be pushed out. Photos by Adam Cohen.

Water at the corner of Hampton Avenue and Old South Street overran the sidewalk...

State Street approaching Summer Street...

See also:

Flooding Incidents in the North Street Neighborhood: 2003-2007
...6/23/03: North Street
Respond above location vehicle stuck in rising water in underpass...

10/8/05: North Street
...multiple calls for flooding under trestle... black dodge avenger stuck in water under trestle... Report of street flooded...

Video: Chamber Presents "Rezoning King Street" to Planning Board (6/13/10)
[Click the above link for] excerpts from the Chamber's "Findings & Recommendations" (PDF). The attention to parking issues and pedestrian comfort is welcome. Potential areas of controversy include:

Allowing more uses without a Special Permit, including hotels. A recent proposal to build a Hilton Garden Inn downtown was extremely controversial. One way to address the public's desire for good design would be robust infill design standards.
Reducing the setbacks between commercial areas and residential neighborhoods
Stormwater management problems caused by an increase in impervious surface

March 10: Zoning Revisions Committee to Meet; Our Suggestions
How will proposed rule changes affect the quality of life within in-town districts? Changes that erode amenities (e.g. greenspace), raise safety issues (e.g. more flooding) or create hassles (e.g. more traffic jams) may defeat the purpose of the Sustainable Northampton Plan by motivating homebuyers to sprawl out elsewhere.

Northampton's Flood and Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan: Floyd Flood Damage Reported Behind View Avenue; Avoid Building on Filled Wetlands
...In general, a core problem for infill in Northampton is to avoid placing large numbers of people and structures in low-lying areas downtown that may be at risk for flooding. As the plan states, "In recent years, heavy rainstorms have caused significant problems in more urbanized areas as increased development inhibits proper drainage and existing or poorly maintained water systems cannot handle increased stormwater runoff."

Flooding is already affecting Northampton's built-up areas during major storms. Weakening wetlands buffer zone requirements downtown will make this worse

[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.]

Topographical Map Shows How Kohl Condo Proposal Will Eat Into a Rare Stand of Mature Trees in Downtown
The following view dramatizes the considerable amount of impervious surface already in the area, especially around King Street and the Coca-Cola plant. Kohl's "infill" project will convert a significant amount of the remaining greenspace to impervious surface. The presence of Millyard Brook shows that this area serves as a natural sink for water in the neighborhood.

Gazette: "Region's storms going to extremes, report finds" (12/5/07)

Springfield Republican: "Northeast seeing more, fiercer rainstorms in line with global warming predictions, study says" (4/5/10)
Healthy wetlands and wetlands buffers mitigate flooding. Compared to manmade stormwater infrastructure, wetlands are cheap, effective, and low-maintenance forms of flood control. Scientific studies suggest wetlands need 50-foot buffers or more to retard degradation from human activity.

Christian Science Monitor: "How to plan better for New England floods" (4/19/10)

As Hurricane Threat Builds, Has Complacency Set In about Flooding? (8/4/07)
Joe Bastardi, Chief Forecaster of the AccuWeather.com Hurricane Center: "New England is fair game from now on until 2025, although the most frequent threats to the Northeast should be later in the run of the cycle."

...Infill sounds great on paper, but when it means paving over green space in downtown Northampton, it runs contrary to sound flood mitigation practice. The reality is that much of the remaining green space in downtown is in low-lying areas that are most susceptible to flooding. It makes sense to go along with the collective wisdom of the past 350 years and leave them undeveloped.

Comparing the New Hazards Mitigation Plan to the Old One: Wetlands Protection Weakened (11/2/08)
[The new Hazards Mitigation Plan states:] "The last hurricane to make landfall in New England was Hurricane Floyd, a weak category 2 hurricane, in November 1999. Therefore, 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, emphasis added)

Boston Globe: "The growth of a thoughtful city"

NorthAssocAdmin — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 16:16:00 GMT

The results of breakneck growth in China lead Carlo Rotella to appreciate how Boston values continuity:

The growth of a thoughtful city

...When I get back from China I no longer take it for granted that I can walk with my kids down our street past trees, yards, and lawns to a park with a playground in it...

Michael Rawson, a historian at Brooklyn College and author of the new book “Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston,’’ put it this way: “It’s always hard to say that there’s a particular culture in one city that’s had continuity over centuries, but it’s more possible to say it of Boston. It’s a place where the search for environmental permanence was born, at least for America, versus just tearing things down. Boston led the charge in developing an appreciation of historical land and historical buildings.’’

... If Boston sometimes feels pokey when compared to [Chinese cities], it also feels more humane. That’s not just because American society in general is more affluent. Boston’s quality of comparatively slow, thoughtful continuity with its own past also has roots in a distinctive civic culture. That culture can be contentious and frustrating, and it doesn’t always produce the right result (the example of Government Center leaps to mind), but we should appreciate it as a crucial element of a livable city.

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See also:

September 14: Public Information Session on Update to Open Space Plan
You are encouraged to attend to participate in discussions regarding the Plan update, and its analysis of needs, goals, and action plan identification.

Bay State Village Visioning Project: Survey Results

Today's Urban Planning Debates Echoed in Northampton's Near Past (9/2/08)
Debates about infill and urban land use have lately become hot topics, spurred by the Sustainable Northampton Plan and the prospective Hilton Garden Inn. Some of the underlying issues have been in play for many years. On the eve of Design Northampton Week, let's revisit some of the voices from Northampton: Reflections on Paradise (1988), a book of photos and interviews by Lionel Delevingne and Faye S. Frail.

John Szawlowski, with son, John, Jr. farmers (p.19)
"People are fortunate in this area, that's some of the best land, we grow some of the best vegetables in the area. It's too bad when you see people selling all this land for buildings... You look around now, you drive through the Industrial Park, when we were kids, we had cows and vegetables--it's gone, and nobody even knows it was there."

Brinkley Thorne (speaking below) and Maisie Cox, architects and co-owners of Thornes Market, with their children (p.20)
"A town like Northampton should be careful. Now for the first time in a long time, people want to build new buildings downtown. It could be done badly. What really intrigues me is that the most sophisticated thing is informality. That quality is so easily lost as things get more prosperous."

Ricardo Barrientos, bilingual teacher and bilingual coordinator, Northampton Public Schools, and Teresa Barrientos, Hispanic parent resource person, Holyoke Public Schools, with their children (p.22)
"Northampton is a very healthy environment to raise kids in. The kids love it--they're Northampton natives. Comparing it to New York City, where I [Teresa] grew up, this is Paradise--trees and green..."

Randall Diehl, painter (p.59)
"Northampton used to be small-town America, now it seems to be trying to imitate New York, which it can never be, and I don't know why it would want to be... I think it's important to preserve the old buildings that give the town dignity..."

Herbert and Robert Ross, owners of Ross Bros. (p.87)
"Holyoke's sad because they're renovating it and it's too homogenized. In Northampton, it's been individualized--people grab a building, put their own selves into it. In Holyoke, it's people buying whole blocks and fixing them up without having any tenants in mind for them. I worry about that happening in Northampton now, I think that growth should be looked at carefully. It looks like such a sparkling little jewel to these outside investors, they just want to jump on it without any real perception of what is going on..."

James Brooks, City Councilor, Ward Six (p.105)
"What does the city need? First of all, we should have our ordinances so that they can be enforced. Second, because I have seen so many new people, I say that we should stick to our present zoning requirements for building lots and houses on those building lots. You can't stop people from moving in...the best way to control it, as well as we can control it, is to make sure we abide by our zoning ordinances, without variances and without special permits... I disagree with the Mayor completely and absolutely when he says that we should fill the open spaces with houses..."

Northampton Redoubt: Urban Ecology, Planting Trees, and the Long-Term View
If we remove all of our in-town forested areas and wetlands they will likely be gone forever or at least a very long time. We would do well for posterity to err on the side of caution.

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)...

Boston Globe: "How the city hurts your brain" (1/14/09)
One of the main forces at work is a stark lack of nature, which is surprisingly beneficial for the brain. Studies have demonstrated, for instance, that hospital patients recover more quickly when they can see trees from their windows, and that women living in public housing are better able to focus when their apartment overlooks a grassy courtyard. Even these fleeting glimpses of nature improve brain performance, it seems, because they provide a mental break from the urban roil...

Greening Smart Growth: The Sustainable Sites Initiative

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

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

State Offers Funds to Help Conserve North Street Woods

MA Secy of Energy and Environmental Affairs: Urban Parks Deserve Protection as do Habitat Reserves and Working Landscapes
[Ian Bowles:] We need smart land conservation along with smart growth. That's why, going forward, the commonwealth is going to concentrate its land protection efforts on three priorities, which complement the administration's smart-growth goals:

Urban Parks: For smart growth to succeed, urban life needs to be attractive. From a land perspective, the best thing we can do to improve urban living is to make sure there are beautiful parks within walking distance of every urban dweller. So we plan to create visionary urban parks in 10 to 15 cities in neighborhoods that don't have them, and to significantly [improve] parks in all 51 Massachusetts cities over the next four years...