Taxing Land at Higher Rate Than Buildings

This is an interesting article in Strong Towns and something to think about related to local revenue generation. I wonder if you could apply it to incentivize development in some areas while leaving the traditional model in areas where you want to retain rural character.

Residential Architecture Exhibition at Crystal Bridges Museum

I have had the pleasure of being one of the first visitors to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR. It was astonishing both from a collections perspective and also the form of the building itself, designed by Moshe Safdie. It isn't located on a well worn path as it is over four hours from Kansas City, but certainly worth a visit if you can detour from another destination.

That said, this year, the museum is hosting an exhibition on residential architecture, asking exhibitors from five firms to examine the specific challenges and opportunities present in Northwest Arkansas and, in turn, develop a full-scale housing prototype that explores the potential of domestic architecture to address an array of local and global issues. Clearly NW Arkansas residential challenges and opportunities are not necessarily shared by all communities, but I have no doubt that many are in common widely across the U.S. You can read about the exhibition in The Architect's Newspaper or on the museum's website.

Why is this of interest to me? I have semi-regularly pontificated about the importance of architecture and design in prior posts and this is another opportunity to talk about how critical it is to emphasize the design of a site, structure, or district. Design related both form and function are linked inextricably and success requires both measures to be excellent. Design arguably has a significant impact on happiness and well-being as noted here, here, and here. A more direct tie-in to residential design was noted in Psychology Today in this piece. Buildings should last more than a generation so when a horrible or even mediocre one is developed, you'll be living with it in your presence for the rest of your life, most likely.

Yet rarely do residential or commercial builders venture too far down a path of excellent architectural or site design. The formulaic is safe, cheap, and mindless. While straying from that recipe holds none of those characteristics. I've many times talked about what Columbus, IN did related to community design and no need to revisit that in depth, but the question is ever present as to why more cities and towns do not at least once try to hold a design competition for a public or critical building.

Most places consider themselves special, unique, and worth preserving with existing character. But they don't put the effort into ensuring this or requiring new development to match their purported qualities. It makes sense to populate local master plans with the blueprints for how a town is going to ensure optimal development outcomes. Following that, local codes, ordinances, or bylaws need to be equally clear, detailed, and ambitious. After that, there are any number of initiatives that can seed the cloud of good civic design such as public building design competitions, exhibitions and challenges such as Crystal Bridges, public-private partnerships, scholarships and prizes, and a variety of incentives that can not only address architecture but can also apply to decarbonization or a broader measure of sustainability.

The effort to focus on excellence in design seems daunting but can actually be a lot of fun and quite rewarding. This is the way to make a lasting impact.

Suburban Retrofits: One Way to Make Up for Mistakes of the Past

The Congress for New Urbanism, the group that advances the concept of the Form-Based Zoning Code, has an interesting article on retrofitting suburbia to be more walkable, functional, and sustainable. I've pasted the first few paragraphs to whet your interest and provided a link for the rest of the article.

"The transformation of specific underutilized places in conventional suburbs is gaining momentum for several reasons. Suburban municipalities with little or no walkability are losing younger generations who are enamored with walkable urban places. From a regional standpoint, a balance of supply and demand of walkable places is needed. Suburbs can help to meet the growing demand for mixed-use urbanism. There are now more than 2,000 “suburban retrofit” projects in America, according to Ellen Dunham-Jones. 

Dunham-Jones and June Williamson, coauthors of Retrofitting Suburbia, presented 11 tactics to transform conventional suburban places at CNU 27 in Louisville. This evolving set of stratagems can be used anywhere, even in a central city, that has suburban form. But different tactics will be more applicable in different contexts and market conditions. Here they are:

1) Garner community input. The community must come to a consensus on transformation, and that means a public process that gathers wide-ranging input and ideas.

Click HERE for the rest of the article.

New Economic Development Facebook Group

I thought it might be worth seeing if a Facebook Group for Harvard Economic Development could have some legs. I'll be posting upcoming projects and events and also share some best practices or projects elsewhere. Hope you drop by for a visit.

LINK: https://www.facebook.com/groups/459880582332691

An Update on Current Projects

 Introduction

I want to continue providing the occasional piece that gives some greater depth to some of the projects that my office is working on. I also thought it might be a good idea to begin with just a brief summary of most of the current projects that the Planning Board is working on to ensure clarity and to distinguish between several projects that have similar names and areas of focus. I’ll conclude with a listing of future topics that are a good lead up to Town Meeting in May.

Current Projects

The most confusing pair of projects currently underway are the Ayer Road TIP project and the Ayer Road Corridor Vision Plan project. While these projects are distinguished in detail in the Blog (April 13, 2021), the cliff notes version is as follows. The Ayer Road Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) project is the federally funded reconstruction of Ayer Road from the Ayer Town line south to the Bowers Brook development. It will slightly increase the width of pavement, narrow the travel lanes, add a multi-use path for pedestrians and bicyclists, and reconfigure several unsafe intersections and stretches of road. The project is currently at the 25% design stage and a MassDOT public hearing on the project is anticipated on March 30, 2022.

The Ayer Road Corridor Vision Plan, also the subject of a three-part series in the Blog (starting on March 29, 2021), is the initiative to create a citizen-driven vision for the Ayer Road Corridor and the development of better zoning tools to bring the vision to a reality (and conversely this program is intended to prevent future degradation of the corridor as is currently occurring). A future column will dive deeper into the current status of the project, its history, and why it remains the lynchpin of local economic development efforts.

Other projects that are separate but have some connection to these two Ayer Road projects include an update to the Transportation Chapter of the 2016 Master Plan and the Climate Action Plan. Through a grant program called District Local Technical Assistance, the Montachusett Regional Planning Commission is currently working with Harvard’s Transportation Advisory Committee and other committees and boards to update the Circulation & Traffic chapter in the 2016 Master Plan. This effort will be evaluating the transportation projects and goals listed in the 2016 Plan chapter for current relevance and also add a climate action lens. This latter emphasis is important because of the parallel work by the Community Resilience Working Group on a Climate Action Plan for Harvard. Since transportation is one of the two primary sources of greenhouse gas emanating from Harvard, it made sense to tie these two planning projects together for economies of scale and the avoidance of redundancy.

Senior housing has been an emphasis of the Planning Board for the last two town meetings and the current focus is on revising the existing Open Space Residential Development bylaw (referred to as Open Space Conservation-Planned Residential Development or OSC-PRD) to make it more viable, to set aside more high value open space, and result in higher quality developments. The Board continues to review early drafts and make revisions based on feedback from members and other interested parties. The expectation is to bring it to Town Meeting in 2022 but the Board encourages the public to check out the project web page and attend meetings to give your input. A future column will go into greater depth on this topic as well.

Other ongoing or future Planning Board and economic development projects include an update to the Hazard Mitigation Plan, developing a specialized zoning for Harvard Center (recommended in several master plans), revising the Protective Bylaw (2016 Master Plan), an economic development survey and plan, and a range of other action items in the Master Plan. Each project will have a web page dedicated to providing public information and key plans and documents. As a future column will elaborate on, the Planning Board seeks meaningful citizen participation on all of these projects and hopes for greater attendance at regular Planning Board meetings as well as special meetings on specific topics. It isn’t enough just to hear about and evaluate the Board’s work at Town Meeting.

Future Pieces

As noted above, a series of future pieces on various aspects of planning in Harvard will follow in the coming weeks and months. The next piece will focus on the value of town planning and how master plans are the guiding tool. I will shine some light on why master plans are so important. The next piece will focus on some of the challenges that Harvard faces now and will in the near future. This is important to give some context to the planning initiatives currently underway or planned for the near future. Following that, I will begin a series of pieces on those initiatives including Open Space Residential Development, the Ayer Road Vision Plan, Protective Bylaw reform, and a zoning district for Harvard Center.

After this series, the hope is that Harvard citizens will have a greater understanding and appreciation of the local planning process and the citizens who volunteer their time to work to make Harvard the best community it can be.

 

Planners and Planning: An Introduction

I wanted to give readers a broad-brush introduction to the world of town planning and the tools and methods that are used to develop and execute projects. Not many people really know what planners are or what they do. I've had people ask me if I meant I was a "planter" and what exactly did I grow. Another person asked what types of parties I planned. Worse than that, once I explained that planners are professionals who work on making communities better places by using tools like master plans, zoning, and subdivision regulations, the eyes often glaze over and they move on to another person at the party.

Source: www.inc.com

Planning as a profession can be in private practice, working for an architectural or engineering practice or on their own, but most town planners work for the public sector as a city or town planner. In many cases, small town planners work alone without professional or full-time administrative staff. Larger communities have one or more professional staff members who often work on specific areas like housing, the environment, or transportation. Many planners are also economic development professionals and are recently adding sustainability to their task lists.

Town Planning is a profession with its roots in several threads of historical civic improvement including the physical realm, public health, and the social sphere. Physical planning emanated from the great architects and landscape architects such as L’Enfant, Daniel Burnham, Frederick Law Olmstead, Charles Eliot, and scores of others who laid out great cities such as Paris, Washington DC, Savannah as well as new towns, parks, or neighborhoods such as Riverside, Letchworth, Welwyn, and Radburn. These pioneers had progressive and utopian ideals and gave less consideration to the needs of people and were more interested in building beautiful, legacy cities with great parks, squares, and buildings.

Riverside General Plan, Source: www.riverside.il.us

Rampant disease in crowded cities led public health professionals to address issues of pollution and sanitation that was overwhelming the public with cholera, emphysema, and a host of other afflictions emanating from the lack of sewers, contaminated public water supplies, garbage handling, and air and water pollution.

Social workers like Jacob Riis and Jane Addams sought to improve the lives of the people living in overcrowded tenements, lacking parks and open spaces, light and fresh air. Each of these professions contributed a foundational element to the planning profession which emerged near the turn of the 20^th century with the recognition that our towns and cities needed to be more comprehensively planned for the future of our communities. As the profession emerged and grew throughout the 20^th century, focus areas such as land use, transportation, the economy, housing, the environment, and others were incorporated into the modern profession seen today. While you may not know many (or any) prominent planning professionals today, you most certainly know their work, particularly if you've been to Seaside, FL; Mashpee Commons; Forest Hills Gardens, NY; or several overseas Guggenheim museums.

Forest Hills Gardens Source: www.apa.org

Professional planners receive their education within accredited Master’s Degree programs and are certified by the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) via experience and training that must be continued throughout a career. In addition, AICP certified professional planners must abide by a strict code of ethics that is lengthy set of principles and procedural requirements that must be maintained. This code requires us to fulfill, among many other provisions, a responsibility to the public interest that includes concern for the rights of others, social justice, and protection and preservation of the environment.

 In today’s world, planners are often fully occupied with applications for site plans, special permits, subdivisions, and other project reviews that leave little time for the creative and interesting work of long-range planning, for thinking about the future and how they can address the more complicated and sometimes conflicting issues facing our communities such as balancing needed growth with protection of open spaces, historical character, housing needs, and the environment. Yet in Harvard, we are fortunate to have very few of those applications compared to neighboring towns, and while our resources for working toward future goals are limited, we are blessed with a number of committed citizen volunteers to lead on these efforts. One key group in that realm is the Harvard Planning Board, made up of six members (five voting and one alternate) dedicated to carrying out long range planning and other duties as noted in the Code of the Town of Harvard. The Board, established in 1952, is served by my position and a very valuable Administrative Assistant who keeps everything glued together. The primary set of policy recommendations guiding the Planning Board in conducting long-range planning is the Master Plan. Harvard’s current Master Plan was adopted in 2016 and contains a vision for the future of Harvard as well as goals and an action plan for carrying out the vision. Their primary day to day tool for carrying out decision making is the Protective (Zoning) Bylaw. Harvard's first zoning bylaw was adopted by Town Meeting in 1951. Since that time, the Protective Bylaw has been refined numerous times to reflect changing opportunities and methods, threats or issues, or fundamental flaws in the language. In many cases, these amendments were sponsored by the Planning Board or Zoning Board of Appeals, because they are on the front lines of the application of the Bylaws and see first hand the issues that arise.

I'll conclude by asking citizens to attend Planning Board meetings and see first hand the issues they discuss and the sometimes difficult decisions they must make. It will certainly give you an opportunity to see how  "the sausage is made" because even seemingly simple Bylaw amendments take quite a long time to craft, edit, and refine. As a professional who has served many planning boards in over 30 years, I will say this is one of the best groups of citizen planners I have ever worked with and Harvard is lucky to have them. So get to know them and perhaps one day we can get you to serve!

Bloomberg's City Lab Shines Spotlight on Serenbe

Serenbe is a mixed-use development in the suburbs of Atlanta. It is an intentional community focused on a relationship to nature. I have seen the project website and read their "about" description, but CityLab, the Bloomberg.com site dedicated to stories in the realm of city planning, did a wonderful job capturing the essence of this place. You can read about it HERE. Another article in Green Building Advisor discusses the green and sustainable elements of the project. Finally, a review by the Congress for New Urbanism, the pioneer of Form Based Codes.

For those of you interested in civic design according to climate adaptation and mitigation principles, check this out: https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2021/10/04/design-new-town-deals-climate-change

Opinion: Bring back corner stores to create a connected, equitable city

 This opinion piece is by Sam Kraft, special to the Seattle Times. The loss of the corner store coincided with the rise of segregated use zoning districts and suburbia. I would argue that it still has a very important role to play in the mix of some traditional neighborhoods. They do not fit everywhere, but they are a cultural enhancement.

Link to Article

 

Ayer Road Commercial Project: Why it is an integrated program

It appears at face value that some opposition to the Ayer Road Commercial District visioning project relates to one or other of the three phases and that if we just did one or two phases, or even just the form-based code, which seems to have some slightly higher level of support, that would suffice. This short piece seeks to explain why the integrated three-phase project was proposed and why I believe that it cannot be limited to the code development.

Point 1 - Phase Integration

Each of the proposed phases creates a needed product that informs the next phase. Subsequent phases or steps cannot be adequately performed without these prior inputs. To put it another way, if the market analysis is not performed, then you cannot derive a fiscal impact. Without a scale of development, with specific use types, you cannot prepare a development plan and no real-world visioning can be performed. Without knowing how much development can be supported, by both the market and the public, there is no way in the Vision Plan phase that you can determine the non-revenue generating amenities that can be required, such as open space set asides and athletic fields. If a clear and effective vision plan is not developed as Phase 2 would accomplish, you would have nothing to use as input for a form-based code. There would be nothing to "base" it on. A very simplistic representation of the data that is expected from this as part of Phase 1 could be as follows:

Use Type          Max Sq. Ft.          Fiscal Impact          Smaller Sq. Ft          Fiscal Impact

Retailing           165,000                + $900,000                80,000                       + $230,000
Restaurants       45,000                  + $450,000                20,000                       - $12,000

Now, the actual analysis will be much more detailed and precise and will offer several additional thresholds to show the differing fiscal impact of each use and can also create combined or bundled use scenarios to show how a combination of uses and thresholds can provide revenue.

Point 2 - Needed Information

Each project phase derives products that answer key questions that staff, boards, and citizens all want and need. Phase 1 will answer the question, "How much square footage of each use type can the market support?" This question has never been asked so comprehensively as prior studies were either not as inclusive and complete or are now significantly out-of-date. The only reason I can conceive as to why one might not want this step performed is out of fear of the results. Phase 2 is the Vision Plan and a huge amount of needed data will be generated at this step--information that is crucial for the whole program. This information includes land that should be protected and preserved as open space and natural areas. This can be farm fields, other field vistas, wetlands, streams, ponds, forested areas, and other types of desirable open space. It can include one or more areas where recreation facilities like athletic fields can be located. The plan can determine where walking trails and bikeways can be located and best connected externally. The plan will show where buildings and uses can best be clustered and located. The final plan will integrate all of these separate questions into a cohesive plan that functions like a village or community gathering place. Phase 3 cannot be done without this cohesive vision. No form-based zoning for this type of area can be done without property owner participation, knowledge of where the open space is to be set aside, where roads and trails are to be placed, where/when/how water and wastewater is going to be brought to the area. To do each of these things singularly would be immensely inefficient and incongruous. It would be virtually impossible. To opponents, this might be a reason to oppose.

Point 3 - Citizen Input

A key to the three phase program is to get citizen participation. Not just feedback, but in fact we had envisioned that a number of citizen stakeholders would be key and integral participants in the process. We were planning on establishing a working committee that included a number of citizen representatives, both at-large and also from that specific part of town. We wanted citizens to be engaged during the design charettes so that they could help design and lay out the plan for the area. We had been considering subgroups to focus on infrastructure, building design, site design, open space, and so on and envisioned citizens serving on each of these specialty groups. The Vision Plan (Phase 2) would be developed as a citizen-centric plan and we would not move on to a form-based code development process until we got that right. Even during the form-based code development process, citizens would be involved making sure that the code that was developed adequately framed and facilitated the vision developed during the Vision Plan process.

In summary, none of these pieces will be successful by themselves. They each require input and feedback from the others. This, we believe, is the only way that Harvard residents and business owners can, for themselves, shape the future of this district so that all primary local goals of revenue generation, nuisance reduction, and placemaking, can be met. These plus the secondary goals of open space protection, sustainable development that meets local climate goals, transportation improvements, developing recreational facilities, and providing needed services and retailing for residents.

NYTimes.com: There’s an Exodus From the ‘Star Cities,’ and I Have Good News and Bad News

Sky high real estate prices and the absolutely real COVID-19 exodus are trends that are already impacting Harvard both in the residential and commercial/industrial markets. For the latter, Ayer Road property inquiries have greatly increased in the past nine months and recently have been a daily occurrence. This is important to keep in mind when debating whether to be proactive regarding our economic future in Harvard, or continue to be reactive and defensive.

 

From The New York Times:

There's an Exodus From the 'Star Cities,' and I Have Good News and Bad News

Everyone is arguing over what the future holds in store, but there may be a surprise silver lining for Democrats in urban exodus. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/12/opinion/New-York-San-Francisco-after-covid.html?smid=em-share