Today’s Gazette reports that Northampton’s Planning Board approved the Sustainable Northampton Plan (PDF) last night. The Cecil Group, a consultant engaged to work on the Plan, provided this memo (PDF) to highlight the latest changes since last month. These changes include: The Sustainable Northampton Plan will be reviewed on an annual basis utilizing a methodology […]
Neighborhood Character
Robert H. Kuehn Jr.: “Thinking Like a Developer”
Robert H. Kuehn Jr., a champion of affordable housing and mixed-use developments, contributed “Thinking Like a Developer” to Preserving and Enhancing Communities: A Guide for Citizens, Planners and Policymakers (2007). Kuehn discusses brownfields revitalization, avoiding acrimony, and a common developer mistake that drives density (p.42-51): A key issue is whether the property to be developed […]
Photo Essay: Our Woods in Winter
Here are pictures taken yesterday from the bike path and roads surrounding the woods behind North Street. Kohl Construction proposes to build 26 condo units in and around these woods. As observed in Preserving and Enhancing Communities: A Guide for Citizens, Planners, and Policymakers, Protecting open space is often about protecting what makes a community special […]
Smart Growth with Balance: The American Planning Association
In its advocacy of Smart Growth, the American Planning Association supports the principles of citizen participation, preservation of neighborhood character, respect for urban greenspace, and fairness. The APA’s Policy Guide on Smart Growth, adopted in 2002, defines Smart Growth as follows: Smart growth means using comprehensive planning to guide, design, develop, revitalize and build communities for all […]
UMass Press: “Natural Land: Preserving and Funding Open Space”
The University of Massachusetts Press (Amherst) recently published Preserving and Enhancing Communities: A Guide for Citizens, Planners, and Policymakers, a timely addition to the Sustainable Northampton debate. The book generally supports Smart Growth concepts while it also underscores the value of urban open space. We focus on the latter in these excerpts from Chapter 10, “Natural Land: Preserving and Funding […]
Our Column in Today’s Gazette: The Hidden Risks of ‘Smart Growth’
Today’s Daily Hampshire Gazette features a guest column written by Dennis Helmus and Adam Cohen, members of NSNA. The column, reprinted below, touches on a number of points we have raised in recent weeks. We have added links so topics can be explored in greater detail. The hidden risks of ‘smart growth’By Dennis Helmus and Adam CohenSmart […]
Seeing Like a State: Planning Gone Awry in the 20th Century
When any master plan is being fashioned, some humility is in order. The past century offers numerous examples of grand visions that made things worse. Let’s visit with James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (Yale Agrarian Studies, 1998). From the jacket copy: [Scott] argues […]
New York Times: “Vibrant Cities Find One Thing Missing: Children”
One big challenge is emerging to the Smart Growth model: how to serve families with young children. In the case of Portland, high housing costs are motivating families to move to the newest edge suburbs, perpetuating sprawl. The New York Times reports (3/24/05): San Francisco, where the median house price is now about $700,000, had […]
Large Lots Gobble Up Land in Massachusetts
In Massachusetts, the chief drivers of sprawl include larger home sizes and lots. The Daily Item reports (3/8/04): Despite its gradual land protection progress, Massachusetts still lost more than 202,000 acres of forest, farmland and open space between 1985 and 1999, nearly 90 percent of those 40 acres a day taken for residential construction, while […]
The Atlantic Monthly: “A Good Place to Live”
While the Sustainable Northampton Plan is under consideration, let’s consider some successful initiatives seen elsewhere. In this Atlantic Monthly article (March 1988), Philip Langdon discusses architects who spurn sprawl and admire characteristics of nineteenth-century American towns, all while acknowledging the preferences of today’s homebuyers and the realities of cars: At first glance, what seems to make Seaside [Florida] special is […]