Planning Commissioners Journal

Recognizing Our Assets

From PCJ Editor Wayne Senville:

It’s an all too common failing, we tend to lose sight of the natural and man-made assets our communities offer: our history, our landmarks, our natural features, the special character of our downtowns and main streets.

Sometimes we recognize them too late, as Joni Mitchell reminds us in her well-known lyrics: “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don't know what you’ve got till it’s gone. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”

In the Winter issue of the Planning Commissioners Journal (due out January 27th), you’ll find several articles on this theme. Gwendolyn Hallsmith starts by reminding us of the economic benefits that can come from recognizing our natural and cultural assets. You'll then read Rob Voigt’s account of how four towns in Ontario have come together to map them out.

Another way of enhancing our assets can come from a combination of strengthening our urban cores, while conserving farmland and natural resources. Beth Humstone discusses one tool for accomplishing this: urban growth boundaries.

As I mentioned last month, the Winter issue also marks the debut of a new partnership we've entered into with a terrific non profit organization, the Project for Public Spaces (PPS). One of their principal interests is ensuring that community assets, in particular parks and open spaces, are well-used and maintained. In our Winter issue, PPS staff highlight their eleven principles for creating great community places.

The physical character and beauty of our cities, towns, and countryside is also a valuable asset. Ed McMahon, a senior fellow at the Urban Land Institute, argues that billboards undermine this, with negative economic impacts.

While some still claim that aesthetics is not within the purview of local government, the Supreme Court over a half-century ago said otherwise.[1] Moreover, as planning historian Laurence Gerckens has pointed out, the impetus for community planning in the U.S. at the turn of the 19th century centered on aesthetics: “realizing an inspiring good order in the public environment while protecting the positive qualities of both the natural environment and the cultural heritage.”[2]

Finally, let’s not forget that it’s engaged citizens who are any community’s most valuable asset -- including dedicated, informed planning board members. In our Winter issue, Carolyn Braun offers some great tips that should new planning commissioners be more effective in their new job.

Take a look at the full contents of our Winter issue -- and if you're not yet a subscriber, consider trying out the Planning Commissioners Journal for a year. 

[1] See Berman v. Parker, 348 U.S. 26 (1954), where the Court found that “it is within the power of the legislature to determine that the community should be beautiful as well as healthy … .”

[2] See Gerckens, “Community Aesthetics & Planning,” PCJ #7 (Nov/Dec. 1992).

 

Conversation With New PCJ Contributing Writer Beth Humstone

From PCJ Editor Wayne Senville:

I’m excited that several new contributing writers will be joining the Planning Commissioners Journal this Spring. They bring a diversity of backgrounds and interests -- but one thing they all have in common is a dedication to planning, and a strong interest in the positive role planning commissioners can play.

Over the coming weeks I’ll be introducing each of them to you, through some short interviews conducted by email correspondence. I want to start with a planner I’ve known and respected for a number of years, Beth Humstone.

Over the past 35 years, Beth has worked as a planning consultant on a wide range of projects in rural communities and small towns. She serves as an advisor to the National Trust for Historic Preservation and is a Board member of the Portland, Maine, Downtown District. Beth is the former Executive Director of the Vermont Forum on Sprawl (now Smart Growth Vermont) and is a past member of the Burlington, Vermont, Planning Commission, and former Chair of Vermont’s Housing & Conservation Trust Fund Board. She is a co-author of Above and Beyond: Visualizing Change in Small Towns and Rural Areas.

Some of you may recall that Beth wrote, "Getting the Density You Want" for our Spring 2009 issue.

Wayne: What first got you interested in planning?

Beth: I am the daughter of a city planner. When, as a child growing up on Long Island, I ventured forth from my leafy suburb with its tiny village center on the Long Island Railroad line, I observed -- often with my father’s help -- the changes brought about by highways, subdivisions, and shopping centers. At the same time, I noticed developed areas, like industrial lands in College Point, Queens, being abandoned. As growth moved further and further out from New York City consuming resources at high rates, other places were being vacated and underused. This didn’t make a lot of sense to me.

The book by Virginia Lee Burton, The Little House, also influenced me. I found it profoundly sad. The sprawl depicted seemed so inevitable. I just couldn't accept that.

I have always wanted to find a better way for communities to grow than what I saw growing up. I’m intrigued by how and why change happens and challenged by the desire of citizens for more sustainable futures in their communities and regions.

Wayne: What planning-related issues most concern you today?

Beth: Right now as an advisor from Vermont to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, I am concerned about the lack of public understanding of the critical role of preservation in community revitalization. At the national level, we are seeing preservation as a tool undermined even in the new administration. Yet, study after study illustrates that preservation is a job generator and has turned around many communities and neighborhoods that experienced serious decline.

Preservation projects have leveraged public and private dollars, made better use of existing public and private investments and brought new coalitions together. But somehow the message of the importance of preservation is not getting out, especially at the state and federal levels.

Other issues that I’m concerned about include both urban and rural abandonment and decline. We are wasting valuable resources -- infrastructure in our cities and natural resources in our rural areas. Another very important issue we’re facing across the country is the need to develop a better public transportation system. We all need to advocate for this, from local commissioners on up.

Wayne: From your experience, what can planning commissions do to position themselves to take a productive leadership role in their community? 

Beth: To take a productive leadership role, planning commissions must be credible. They must be trustworthy, dependable, reasonable, fair, informed, open, and accessible to the public -- and accountable to those who appoint or elect them. People need to know that they will get a fair hearing before a planning commission and that the commission is a source of necessary and accurate information. The planning commission is responsible for integrating and prioritizing the diverse needs and priorities of the community. This also means taking a long term view, while understanding short term needs.

Wayne: If there's one piece of advice you'd most like to give to a new member of a planning commission, what would it be? 

Beth: Read the town plan and the implementing regulations and get to know them well. They should be guiding your actions. Ask questions about them. Keep them up to date. And help others to know them as well.

Wayne: In your upcoming article for the Spring issue of the Planning Commissioners Journal (“Future Housing Demand: Problem or Opportunity”), you speak about the need of suburbs to consider raising densities and providing greater diversity in types of housing. How can planners deal with the resistance this often generates, especially when there’s talk of increased densities?

Beth: Many people have a knee jerk, negative reaction when they hear that densities may increase, often without an understanding of what it means in the context of their community or neighborhood. It is the role of the planning commissioner to communicate what more density means, what it looks like, and how it will be applied in each case and to be sensitive to the character and conditions in the places where more density will be encouraged.

Wayne: In your article, you also talk about shifting consumer preferences, especially for smaller, greener, less expensive housing? Do you see this happening nationwide, and do you think this is a long-term shift or more reflects the impact of the past year's deep recession? 

Beth: Because of the demographic changes taking place throughout the country -- in age and household composition -- and because the era of cheap oil is mostly over, I think over the long run consumer preferences will continue to shift to smaller, greener, more efficient housing. While there will be some who will still strive for a larger home, or more land, or a more remote location, for a majority I think preferences and patterns are changing.

H is for Historic Preservation

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America is a relatively young civilization, measuring its history in hundreds, rather than thousands, of years. With a seemingly inexhaustible supply of new and largely undeveloped land to the west (excluding from consideration, as unfortunately most did, the preexisting Native population) many Americans were uncommitted to long-term occupation of a particular place. Neighborhoods, communities, and even entire regions were used for their immediate benefits and then permitted to deteriorate in the name of "progress."

Until the late 1920s, little was done to protect the urban artifacts of the nation's cultural history -– other than the preservation and restoration of isolated structures associated with historic personages, such as George Washington's Mount Vernon residence. But in 1929 this began to change with John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s decision to restore the city of Williamsburg, Virginia, to its colonial-era glory.

In short order, other cities embarked on major historic preservation programs. In 1931, Charleston, South Carolina, placed its eighty-acre Battery District in a specially zoned historic preservation district. The following year New Orleans' Vieux Carré became the first urban district in America to receive local landmark preservation status. These actions expanded historic preservation beyond individual structures to the preservation of entire urban districts of distinctive character.

Urban Renewal, founded in the U.S. Housing Act of 1954, is most commonly remembered for large-scale central city demolitions. But among the distinguishing features of the Act was its emphasis on the rehabilitation of older central city homes. Section 701 of the Act made federal funds available to local governments for the preparation of historic district legislation and the development of historic preservation programs.

The most influential effort in historic preservation initiated with the support of Urban Renewal was the 1956 College Hill Study undertaken by the Providence (Rhode Island) City Planning Commission and the Providence Preservation Society. Beginning with an extensive inventory of the 380-acre "College Hill" district, the project resulted in a historic area zoning ordinance; a system for rating historic architecture; and a technique for integrating historic architecture into a proposed central area redevelopment plan. Providence's work served as a model for other communities to follow.

The demolition of New York City's Pennsylvania Station in 1965, one of the nation's most magnificent railroad stations, shocked many New Yorkers, as well as citizens across the country. 

Outraged by the fact that there was no legal recourse to stop the demolition (the building was privately owned by the nearly bankrupt Pennsylvania Railroad), New Yorkers responded by enacting later that year a comprehensive landmarks preservation law. New York City now boasts the largest collection of designated landmarks of any municipality: nearly 1,000 individual landmark buildings, more than 100 interior spaces, and 70 historic districts comprising more than 20,000 buildings.

At the federal level, Congress enacted the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 which created the National Register of Historic Places; provided funding for the National Trust for Historic Preservation; and offered tax credits for housing rehabilitation in National Register Districts. Within twenty-five years of its passage there were over 8,000 historic districts listed in the National Register.

The scope of historic preservation broadened in the 1980s to include a focus on the link between economic development and historic preservation. 

The National Trust established a "National Main Street Center" to support local efforts to rehabilitate older commercial areas. In the last two decades of the twentieth century, Main Street programs generated more than $8 billion in physical reinvestment in the historic downtowns of over 1,300 communities.

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For more on this topic, see our special issue: Planning for Historic Preservation

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Text by Laurence C. Gerckens, FAICP. Illustration by Paul Hoffman.
Text & illustration copyright Champlain Planning Press, Inc. | contact: pcjoffice@gmail.com

Preserving Historic Schools

 Very nicely produced video by Colorado Preservation, Inc., on the value of saving historic schools -- and keeping them in use as schools.

As noted by Jenny Buddenborg of the National Trust for Historic Preservation: 

"Historic schools are community assets. That’s the message Colorado Preservation, Inc. (CPI) is taking to school districts across Colorado. Through their historic schools survey project, CPI combed the Centennial State to inventory schools still owned by school districts, completing reconnaissance-level surveys for those more than 50 years old. Using this information, they commissioned a film, “Our Living Legacy: Colorado’s Historic Schools,” featuring six historic schools that underwent successful rehabilitations. The goal? To demonstrate that older and historic schools can be rehabilitated to meet today’s educational standards, save capital costs, eliminate indirect costs of sprawl, and be a source of community pride. 

A copy of the film has been distributed to every school district in the state, along with publications from the Council of Educational Facility Planners International on how to successfully renovate older and historic school facilities." 

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We've also published two articles on schools and their relationship to planning & land use: Back to School for Planners,by Tim Torma, and School Sprawl, by Edward McMahon. For excerpts and information on ordering & downloading these two articles. Torma's article is also included in our special issue on schools & planning.

Saving the World

 Came across this video via the National Trust for Historic Preservation's web blog. As Leah Suhrstedt explains in the blog posting, "The work being done by the World Theatre Foundation in Kearney, NE is a great example of how a small group of individuals and a little bit of funding can lead to big things (or, as they humbly put it, can “Save the World”). The foundation received a grant from the Charles Evans Hughes Memorial Foundation Fund, part of the National Trust Preservation Fund grant program, to complete a feasibility study and building assessment for the Masonic Temple Building. Built in 1926, the building housed the World Theater until it closed in 2008. ... the World Theatre Foundation hopes to restore the now-vacant theatre and operate it as a non-profit movie house. ... The following video, created by Partner-in-the-Field Representative Laurie Richards from Heritage Nebraska, is the first in a series celebrating Nebraska’s artistic heritage and the importance of main street theatres in the community and across the state."

During my travels across the U.S. on Route 50 two years ago, I was also struck by the tremendous impact Main Street movie theater restorations can have. Take a look at my two reports on this, Hulda's Theater (North Vernon, Indiana) and Behind the Curtains (Emporia, Kansas). I also wrote a short article for the Planning Commissioners Journal called Preservation Takes Center Stage on the value of restoring vacant theaters (use the link for a complimentary pdf of this article, part of our special issue on planning for historic preservation). 

Affordable Modern Prefab

Is it possible to design & build a distinctive looking modern prefabricated house? Take a look at this short video about Alchemy Architect's weeHouse being installed in various sites and configurations. For more detailed information about the weeHouse.

Early in the video there's a reference to the Lustron House, an early post-World War II effort to develop attractive manufactured homes. We found an interesting 15 minute video about the history of the Lustron and efforts to preserve one Lustron house.

For more on the signficance of the Lustron, take a look also at planning historian Laurence Gerckens' short piece "The Unfulfilled Promise of High Tech Housing" (and accompanying sidebar by Beth Orenstein with more on the Lustron) -- this was one section of our special issue, The Promise of America: Ten Successes and Ten Failures that Shaped the 20th Century American City (available to order & download).

Reports from Leg 2 of "Circle The USA"

From PCJ Editor Wayne Senville:

I'm back from the second segment of my planned "Circle the USA" travels, covering Detroit; Troy and Flint, Michigan; and Elkhart County and northwestern Indiana.

 

I've filed the following reports. Take a look, and sign up for our Circle the USA blog feed and/or email updates.

 

-- When Rouge Turned Green

-- Preservation or Demolition?

-- Campus Martius Park in Downtown Detroit

-- A Suburb Plans for Change

-- Not Giving Up on Flint, I

-- Not Giving Up on Flint, II

-- Good or Bad Signs in Indiana?

-- A Main Street Succeeds in Tough Times

-- Planning for 46 Miles of Lakeshore

My next segment will include several days in the Chicago area, followed by stops in Kankakee County, Illinois; Dubuque, Iowa; and southern Wisconsin.

 

Again, check out our Circle the USA web site where announcements and reports will be posted.

Saving Fenway Park

From PCJ General Manager Betsey Krumholz:

Being from Vermont you'll have to excuse our personal interest in the Boston Red Sox. But we think you'll find the following Red Sox story worth hearing about -- especially in light of the article on charrettes just published in our Summer issue:

“For ten days [in August 2000], an air of controlled chaos characterized Room L308 in the Library Building at Simmons College in Boston. Chalkboards were crammed full of random, late-night-inspired ideas written in a vaguely decipherable scrawl. Reference books, rolls of trace paper, markers, and miscellaneous drafting tools piled high on a ragtag collection of worktables. Clumps of wires and cords stretched across the room to power laptop computers, CAD stations, printers and copiers. Empty Coke bottles unceremoniously scattered the floor. Amongst it all, clusters of casually dressed professionals and curious visitors feverishly debated the intricacies of traffic counts, aisle widths, and historic preservation standards above the combined din of ringing cell phones and a borrowed boom box pumping out strains of Elvis Costello and the Attractions.”

-- From Design Symposium A Rousing Success! Summary Report by Jeffrey Harris of Save Fenway Park.

Charrettes gather professionals, community leaders, and passionate citizens under one roof for one purpose. When done properly they harness imagination, balanced by fact and reason, and the results can be surprising. While many charrettes are organized by planning officials or development interests, this is the story of how community advocates used the charrette process to reframe one very important development discussion, and challenged public officials to see things differently.

From the earliest whispers that the Boston Red Sox were planning to build a new ballpark, the Save Fenway Park (SFP) volunteers understood clearly the threat to the historic park.

The Red Sox organization had a comprehensive vision which included not only a brand new facility, but the major redevelopment of the surrounding neighborhood. With support from the Mayor’s Office (and a big advertising budget) it appeared that the deal was done, and Fenway Park would become yet another piece of Red Sox history.

But the SFP team was not out yet. The Fenway Community Development Corporation (FCDC) had been working for several years on its “Urban Village Plan” which envisioned new affordable housing and a more attractive environment for retail and other commercial uses along an under-developed section of the main thoroughfare through the neighborhood. The location and footprint of the beloved Fenway Park, and its associated uses, loomed large in this planning.

Both SFP and the FCDC were frustrated with the “public” planning process charted by the Boston Redevelopment Authority (and the Red Sox organization) as the city deliberated the re-zoning of the neighborhood to accommodate the demands of the team. The neighborhood groups felt that the process was geared only toward the development of a new stadium, and had not sufficiently considered the possibility that keeping the existing stadium could, in fact, be a better option.

Want to buy a bridge? And I'm not talking about the Brooklyn Bridge!

I was thumbing through my local paper's classfied ads a few days ago, and came across something that caught my eye: Historic Bridge Available.

That's right. Our Agency of Transportation here in Vermont (known as "VTrans") has a bridge it wants to sell you. Actually, they're not even selling it -- they'll give it to you free!

It's a "historically significant" 122 foot-long metal truss bridge across the White River in Stockbridge, Vermont (see photos below). Unfortunately, it needs to be replaced.

About ten years ago, VTrans completed a comprehensive study of which of Vermont's many historic bridges were worth preserving. It looked at factors such as the bridge's structural condition, hydraulics, traffic loads, historic significance, and cost.

Some bridges have been put to new use, often as bike and pedestrian facilties. Others remain in place for vehicular use. But still others -- such as Bridge No. 130 -- fall into the "documentation and demolition" category.

According to Catherine Quinn, a historic preservation specialist with VTrans, "we are required to make historic bridges that are slated for demolition available for reuse to a responsible entity, hence the advertisement in the newspaper for Bridge No. 130 in Stockbridge."

Like an Anchor Store for Downtown

Just came across this story about plans for a downtown theater re-opening in Carbondale, Illinois (from the November 14 issue of The Daily Egyptian newspaper):

I was especially struck by the Councilman's remark (quoted above) that "the theatre would be like an anchor store for downtown Carbondale."

Reading this reminded me of what I heard during my cross-country trip this Summer: that theaters and arts centers are vital components of strong downtowns and main streets.

See my post "Hulda's Theatre" on the remarkable theatre restoration completed in the small Indiana city of North Vernon, and  "Behind the Curtains," about the ambitious rennovation still underway in Emporia, Kansas.

Theater restoration projects don't just bring economic benefits to downtown -- in small towns and cities they can help build community through the cooperative efforts needed to accomplish the project. Restoring old theaters (which have often sat vacant) typically requires a major committment from dozens of local residents volunteering their time -- and from local businesses contributing equipment and services. In Emporia, for example, area businesses donated much of the heating, air conditioning, and plumbing-related equipment and services.

Note: if you've been involved in a theater restoration project in your community, let us know about it. Either email us, or post a comment below.

I'm excerpting from a portion of Carbondale Mayor Cole's remarks about the theater in the continuation of this post. At the bottom of the continuation of this post, you can also download a complimentary copy of an article I authored, "Preservation Takes Center Stage," from a special back issue of the Planning Commissioners Journal