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

Last Minute Questions...

As Annual Town Meeting approaches in Harvard, many likely know how they are going to vote and no new information is going to change their mind. But on the chance that there are undecided's out there,  unanswered questions, need for clarification, or any other knowledge gaps that need to be filled, I thought I would write this last piece before the doors figuratively open for Town Meeting.

Senior Residential Development

The Planning Board has been conducting outreach since last October and we hope that we have clearly and concisely answered any lingering questions about what is being brought forth as Articles 20 and 21 but here is a summary:

• Article 20 is entitled, "Amend Protective Bylaw Chapter 125 by Adding a New Section 125-57, Senior Residential Development." This bylaw amendment is creating a new section in the Protective (Zoning) Bylaw that initially provides a framework for senior housing development by defining what it is, providing a description of the age restrictions, providing criteria for age-appropriate design such as "zero step entrances" and other features, caps senior housing development at 15% of the town's total housing units, and limits the number of units that can be approved and permitted annually. Finally, this new section refers to two current types of senior-related housing that are already on the books: accessory apartments and assisted living. The Board anticipates bringing forward other senior housing types to insert into this section at future town meetings based on what was learned in the three surveys that were conducted early this year.
  
  
• Article 21 is entitled, "Amend Protective Bylaw Chapter 125 Section 125-18.1, Accessory Apartment Use." This is currently on the books by the name Accessory Apartment Use and the Board is looking to make a few amendments to this section that will make it easier to build senior-ready units on existing residential lots. The key proposed changes are to increase the maximum size to 1,500 square feet from the existing 1,200 square feet, changing the ratio of the accessory to primary residence from no more than 1/3 of total usable floor area of the unit and primary residence combined to no more than 50% of the size of the primary unit as a cleaner formula, and most importantly making the unit permitted by-right if built according to the age-appropriate design standards listed in the proposed 125-57.

While these two amendments seem like pretty small steps to be taking given the huge and complex bylaw that was considered for the fall 2020, the Board took advice from a number of advising boards and individuals who suggested going a little slower and smaller, easing in to the various types that were ultimately desired over time so that each Town Meeting could have a chance to more fully digest and assess what was being proposed. The Board anticipates additional bylaws in the fall of 2021 to continue the program of providing options for seniors--seniors that do not fit neatly into just one age or lifestyle category.

Lastly, the Board has developed a number of documents that can be found on the project website that is HERE. Included is a one-page summary that has a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) added to it that we hope will answer all of your questions or concerns. If not, you are welcome to send me any additional questions and I will not only answer them personally before ATM but try to get them posted to the FAQ as well.

Ayer Road Commercial Development Project

As a part of Article 8 of the Warrant, the Planning Board is seeking $300,000 from the Capital Stabilization and Investment Fund to conduct a three-phase project that will culminate in the development of several deliverables that will promote and implement a positive vision for the Ayer Road Commercial Corridor. The Planning Board has created a web page for the project that includes a variety of handouts and reports that describe in detail what the project entails and what it is expected to accomplish. You can check out this page and its contents HERE. Essentially, the project is based on:

1. The premise that Harvard needs tax revenue and the commercial district is currently our best opportunity to facilitate such revenue.
   
   
2. That historical development and current inquiries indicate trends extended of less than optimal types of buildings, site improvements, and business types.
   
   
3. That current zoning facilitates these trends and does not incentivize the type of development Harvard wants and needs.
   
   
4. That no comprehensive vision for the district has ever been developed and this is what is needed to achieve consensus and encourage action.
   
   
5. That while there have been many studies and plans created but often never acted upon in the past, this program is different in that it is specific and targeted, will involve significant public participation, and result in specific deliverables intended to facilitate implementation. These include detailed market data, clear fiscal impact information, a detailed vision plan for the area including protected open space, and the specific zoning tools and other methods to make it all a reality.
   

The Planning Board envisions using a Smart Growth strategy to enable a mixed-use district that will be the envy of small towns nationwide. It will be a walkable village where socializing, hanging out, shopping, and engaging in a variety of activities will be enabled. As stated similarly for the senior housing section above, there are summaries and FAQs on the project page but you are encouraged to send us any additional questions and I will not only answer them personally before ATM but try to get them posted to the FAQ as well.

Thank you again for your careful consideration of these two impactful programs. They are directly based on specific goals and actions stated in policy documents such as past master plans. You can contact us at cryan@harvard.ma.us for questions.

ARTICLE: The single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth…

By Chris Smaje (resilience.org)

Interesting post from an author of the blog, Small Farm Future. Below is a short snippet from the piece plus a link to the full article on Resilience. Enjoy.

The single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth…is a vegan diet. Well, at least it is according to Joseph Poore. But I have an alternative suggestion. The single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth is to stop thinking there’s a single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, or that bang for your buck metrics of this kind are helpful in formulating how best to live.

Here, I’ll elaborate that suggestion, grounding the discussion in the debate about veganism versus livestock farming. The debate gets a lot of airtime, and I’ll only touch lightly on a few aspects of it here. I say a little more...Read Full Article Here

The Isolation of Aging in an Auto-Oriented Place

Source: Strong Towns

This is a timely article in the Strong Towns Blog. If we are to aspire to our Age-Friendly

Community status, we need to provide a good pedestrian environment plus things to walk to.

"By designing our cities for cars, we have created landscapes that exclude the aging."

LINK: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/4/14/what-developments-mean-for-you-as-you-get-older

The Future of Ayer Road, Part 3

In Part 1 of this series, I shared with you the historical planning efforts intended to make something good happen in the Ayer Road Corridor. Part 2 detailed the current conditions in the corridor and certain kinds of development pressures that I asserted were not aligned with most people's preferences. In this Part 3, I lay out the possibilities and close by talking about what you can do to make this pathway a reality.

If interested Harvard citizens gathered together (if that can happen soon), what do you think a collective vision for the Ayer Road Corridor might look like? Would it look like it does now? It certainly would not look like Route 9 in Framingham and not likely to resemble Great Road in Acton either. Is there any place that you can imagine out there that you'd like it to resemble? I'd guess that some might say a town forest somewhere while a few others might suggest a place like Shelburne Falls or Grafton, VT. Regardless, there is probably some measure of variation between potential visions but also not too wide of a range overall.

When I first came upon the area...

Ayer Road Projects Clarification

When two simultaneous projects are in play related to the same general geographic area, confusion may ensue. So when a resident confounded the commercial corridor vision plan project with the Ayer Road Transportation Improvement Program (TIP), I thought it would be important to distinguish clearly between the two.

The Ayer Road TIP Project

The Town through the Department of Public Works (DPW) is working with the transportation engineering consulting firm TEC to guide a local road reconstruction project through the gauntlet of the Transportation Improvement Program or TIP process. This federal funding program is administered by the state and managed by regional MPOs or Metropolitan Planning Organizations which in the case of Harvard is the Montachusett Regional Planning Commission or MRPC. If you haven't already been bedazzled by the sheer volume of acronyms, keep reading. A complete description of the TIP process is available HERE but in short, it's the way federal highway and transit dollars are allocated to individual states and must operate within the guidelines established by the feds and the state.

The Town, through the DPW, has prioritized the reconstruction of Ayer Road between the approximate area where Dunkin Donuts is up to the Ayer town line. Specifics related to the condition of the road precipitating this project can be found in the Project Need Form which details the "Identification of Problem, Need, or Opportunity" and describes the condition of the road. The project is currently at the 25% design stage which elicits a state review of the detailed plans. The Land Use Boards office will be working with the DPW to get the word out when the Public Hearing is scheduled. For citizens interested in this project, we also recommend attending the next Transportation Advisory Committee meeting where the item will be on the agenda.

Commercial District Vision Planning Project

Another Ayer Road-related project currently underway is the effort to secure funding from CPIC to conduct a three-phase initiative to create a model zoning bylaw for the Ayer Road Commercial Corridor. A wealth of information about the project is located on THIS WEBSITE but I will summarize here. Previous efforts to find a solution to the haphazard development of Ayer Road in the Commercial (C) district have not nearly been bold enough nor effective. The Planning Board thus has developed an interconnected three-step process to get us over the finish line regarding an effective vision and regulatory framework for the area. The first step will involve a professional market analysis and related fiscal impact analysis. This step is intended to assess what the market could support in the corridor and what the tax and other revenues generated by this could be. The next step is to conduct a citizen-driven vision plan for the corridor looking at building layouts and concentrations, design, conservation, recreation amenities, transportation issues, and infrastructure. It will result in sketches and renderings of what Harvard citizens envision for the area. Finally, an innovative zoning model called form-based codes would be created for the area to translate the citizen vision to a reality. The Planning Board encourages you to visit the project website (link above) and learn more. Hopefully you will support this at Town Meeting and change the future direction of this critical area.

NYTimes.com: How Biden Can Free America From Its Zoning Straitjacket

Interesting article from The New York Times today. Massachusetts cities and towns that continue to practice exclusionary zoning may find it difficult to obtain both state and federal funds for infrastructure.

Article: How Biden Can Free America From Its Zoning Straitjacket

If a state wants funds for infrastructure, it should meet strict conditions about housing construction.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/12/opinion/biden-infrastructure-zoning.html?smid=em-share

The Future of Ayer Road, Part 2

While Part One of this three feature series covered the recent history of trying to find a solution for developing the Ayer Road Commercial Corridor including past master plans and work of the Economic Development Analysis Team (EDAT), this part will address the current status of the corridor and the bylaws that permit development there. I will cover what is within the corridor now, how this differs from what many citizens envision for the corridor, and why it is what it is.

 

 

The corridor is located on the north side of the Town of Harvard approximately 4 miles west of Interstate 495, approximately 19 miles from Route 128, and approximately 34 miles to the center of Boston. Harvard is also 10 miles to Leominster, MA, 20 miles to Nashua, NH, and 29 miles to Worcester, MA.

The project area, corresponding to the commercially zoned area (C-District) is approximately 344.5 acres along a +/-1.2 mile stretch of Ayer Road (Route 110/111) extending from the Route 2 interchange to 1/3 mile south of the Ayer Rotary. There are a variety of land uses within the corridor area. They include retailing, general office, medical office, over-55 rental residential, single-family residential, personal services, heavy commercial uses, manufacturing, institutional, and indoor recreation.