Old zoning promotes addiction
Over the past few years I have participated in several public forums where Attleboro residents were invited to contribute their ideas on how city government should plan for future growth.
Some residents saw growth as an opportunity-- to revitalize the downtown with new investment dollars, to make housing available to the city’s sons and daughters, and to make it affordable for those on moderate incomes. Others saw growth as a threat--with new homes consuming open space, outstripping the city’s capacity to provide services such as education and fire protection, yet priced too high for someone with the income of a teacher or firefighter.
So which is it: an opportunity or a threat? I think it’s both. And it falls to city officials, guided by local and state laws, to manage growth in a way that takes advantages of promising opportunities, while minimizing the threats.
However, growth in Attleboro and surrounding communities is governed largely by zoning laws that date back at least fifty years, to a time when a home in the suburbs was the fulfillment of the American Dream. From drive-ins to drive-thrus, the automobile has been an essential ingredient of that dream ever since. The resulting sprawl means that many of us must migrate daily, often at a crawl, from homes in residential zones to stores in commercial zones and to workplaces in industrial zones. Addiction is not too strong a word for the dependence on petroleum that is caused in part by our outdated zoning laws.
There is a better way, and some call it smart growth. Smart growth is a collection of policies and strategies for making communities more livable, with an emphasis on walkable neighborhoods, public transit, and conservation of open space. It’s goals are not really controversial; smart growth has caught on at all levels of government, and on both sides of the political aisle. But smart growth is often hard to put into practice, because it often relies on developers who are willing to go the extra mile to incorporate smart growth principles into their plans.
I have a simple, two-part prescription for smart growth in Attleboro. First, within a ten-minute walk of the downtown, new housing of every kind--single-family and multi-family--should be encouraged, even if it means cutting down trees or building next to the river. The downtown area is the best place for affordable housing, because the central location, close to essential services and transit, makes it possible for an individual or a family to get by without a car. The townhouses built by Joe Caponigro off Dennis Street would qualify as smart growth in my opinion. So would 42 Park Street, with its shop in front and townhouses behind.
Second, for developments in other parts of the city, where automobile dependence is unavoidable, conservation of open space should be the top smart growth priority. For each acre of land cleared for development, I would like to see one acre preserved. In fact, this is what the city’s Open Space and Recreation Plan calls for.
Victoria Estates off Read Street is my nominee for best smart growth subdivision in the city. It’s a very walkable neighborhood with sidewalks on curving streets and islands of green in the center of each cul-de-sac. Best of all, eight of its twenty acres are set aside as conservation land. It doesn’t quite reach my goal of a fifty-fifty split, but it comes close. This subdivision was built by W.B. Construction and Development under a little-used zoning ordinance as an Open Space Residential Development (OSRD). The city should update and promote this ordinance as a key component of smart growth in Attleboro.
The urban core and suburban outskirts of Attleboro are both ripe for growth, as long as it’s smart growth.
Some residents saw growth as an opportunity-- to revitalize the downtown with new investment dollars, to make housing available to the city’s sons and daughters, and to make it affordable for those on moderate incomes. Others saw growth as a threat--with new homes consuming open space, outstripping the city’s capacity to provide services such as education and fire protection, yet priced too high for someone with the income of a teacher or firefighter.
So which is it: an opportunity or a threat? I think it’s both. And it falls to city officials, guided by local and state laws, to manage growth in a way that takes advantages of promising opportunities, while minimizing the threats.
However, growth in Attleboro and surrounding communities is governed largely by zoning laws that date back at least fifty years, to a time when a home in the suburbs was the fulfillment of the American Dream. From drive-ins to drive-thrus, the automobile has been an essential ingredient of that dream ever since. The resulting sprawl means that many of us must migrate daily, often at a crawl, from homes in residential zones to stores in commercial zones and to workplaces in industrial zones. Addiction is not too strong a word for the dependence on petroleum that is caused in part by our outdated zoning laws.
There is a better way, and some call it smart growth. Smart growth is a collection of policies and strategies for making communities more livable, with an emphasis on walkable neighborhoods, public transit, and conservation of open space. It’s goals are not really controversial; smart growth has caught on at all levels of government, and on both sides of the political aisle. But smart growth is often hard to put into practice, because it often relies on developers who are willing to go the extra mile to incorporate smart growth principles into their plans.
I have a simple, two-part prescription for smart growth in Attleboro. First, within a ten-minute walk of the downtown, new housing of every kind--single-family and multi-family--should be encouraged, even if it means cutting down trees or building next to the river. The downtown area is the best place for affordable housing, because the central location, close to essential services and transit, makes it possible for an individual or a family to get by without a car. The townhouses built by Joe Caponigro off Dennis Street would qualify as smart growth in my opinion. So would 42 Park Street, with its shop in front and townhouses behind.
Second, for developments in other parts of the city, where automobile dependence is unavoidable, conservation of open space should be the top smart growth priority. For each acre of land cleared for development, I would like to see one acre preserved. In fact, this is what the city’s Open Space and Recreation Plan calls for.
Victoria Estates off Read Street is my nominee for best smart growth subdivision in the city. It’s a very walkable neighborhood with sidewalks on curving streets and islands of green in the center of each cul-de-sac. Best of all, eight of its twenty acres are set aside as conservation land. It doesn’t quite reach my goal of a fifty-fifty split, but it comes close. This subdivision was built by W.B. Construction and Development under a little-used zoning ordinance as an Open Space Residential Development (OSRD). The city should update and promote this ordinance as a key component of smart growth in Attleboro.
The urban core and suburban outskirts of Attleboro are both ripe for growth, as long as it’s smart growth.
--Published in the Attleboro Sun Chronicle, 23 February 2006
posted by Charles Adler at 5:53 PM
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