The lead story in today’s Gazette reports on surging interest in home gardens: Veggie-mania: As food, other costs rise, more stake hopes on home gardens …Locally, garden centers are seeing a spike in sales of garden supplies… According to the Associated Press, W. Atlee Burpee & Co., the nation’s largest seed company, has sold twice […]
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Video: Notre Dame Urban Design Studio Presentation
We are pleased to present these video recordings of Notre Dame’s June 2 urban design studio proposal for Northampton. Professor Phil Bess presents highlights of a growth and development plan for Cooperstown, NY as an example of what suggestions might come from the studio. The planning board will discuss the studio proposal at its June […]
Notre Dame Pitches Urban Design Studio to Northampton
To a crowded June 2 audience in City Council Chambers, Professor Philip Bess from the Notre Dame School of Architecture offered an urban design studio to Northampton. Effectively, the studio would help visualize some of the concepts in the Sustainable Northampton Plan, such as compact, mixed-use development. The components of the studio would be an […]
Mayor’s Email Update
Mayor Clare Higgins has just released a new email update to the public, and we are reproducing it here for your general information. We call your special attention to the upcoming presentation from Phil Bess, Professor and Graduate Program Director of the Architecture Program, University of Notre Dame. It will take place on June 2 […]
Condo Monotony: The Future of Ward 3?
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 […]
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 […]
People Cannot Live on Boutiques Alone: The Myth of Northwest 23rd
Northwest 23rd Avenue in Portland, Oregon sounds a bit like Main Street in Northampton. It is “lined with classy shops and restaurants” that attract visitors from a wide area. To be sure, these are both pleasant destinations. We are glad to have them around. However, they are not sufficient for meeting all the core needs […]
Portland, Oregon Voters Sour on Densification Over Time
In the back of the Sustainable Northampton Plan, you’ll find results from a 2006 opinion survey (Appendix B, p.71-80). At first blush, it appears that Smart Growth principles such as densification and transit-oriented development are popular: 89% of respondents agreed that “Development Should Be Encouraged At Densities And Locations That Can Support Transit”. The problem […]
Halle-Neustadt: A Case Study in Compact, Transit-Oriented Development
Randal O’Toole of the Thoreau Institute tells the story of Halle-Neustadt, a case study in compact, transit-oriented development in East Germany. He draws parallels between certain soviet planning concepts and Smart Growth. O’Toole does not claim, nor do we, that Smart Growth itself is the work of communists. What we do see, however, is the […]
Portland: A Photo Tour of Spiraling Densification
Randal O’Toole of the Thoreau Institute most kindly assembled a photo tour of Portland, Oregon for us. For a generation Portland has been a stronghold of Smart Growth planning. Mr. O’Toole provides the following narrative: What we see happening is that planners are never satisfied — let them densify you a little bit, and they […]