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When a sleepy town becomes an Edge City
By adamg on Fri, 01/25/2008 - 8:55am
Dave Atkins ponders the implications of the giant Westwood Station project (massive housing/office complex next to the 128 train station) on the small town:
... I think the alternative to growth is stagnation, so I am supportive of the project. I do wish there was more discussion of the vision behind it and some way in the community to think about this as more than just a tax revenue source or traffic magnet. Time will tell the fate of our growth.
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Comments
Define "small town"
I don't know if there is a formal definition, but a community of 20,000 next to a major highway blessed by public transit and situtated smack in the middle of a US Census MSA doesn't exactly fit my definition.
Maybe it is a matter of perspective - I lived in isolated communities of less than 8,000 for much of my childhood. Perhaps that's why I laugh when anybody labels any township inside 495 as a "small town". Sorry, but your place of residence has been one giant bedroom for an urban area since 1970. If you haven't bothered to notice that so few of your neighbors work near where they live, that isn't anybody else's problem.
Have you been to Westwood?
Aside from the small section of Rte. 1 that passes through it, it IS sleepy, especially when compared to neighboring Norwood (we recently drove through Westwood basically because we could and I was amazed how little it's changed in the 20 years since I used to drive through it regularly on my way to try to drum up news stories in the even sleepier town of Medfield).
No way is it one of the "Edge Cities" Joel Garreau wrote about (for that, you'd have to look at places like Natick or Framingham or, even, possibly Norwood). But will Westwood Station change that? The project is a pretty fascinating thing, both because of its size and because it is located right on a major highway interchange - it's the sort of "smart growth" idea that was one of the few good things to come out of the Romney administration, but at what cost (or benefit) to the rest of the town?
Smart Growth
Whether the Westwood development proves to be Smart Growth, as that term is used by urban planners rather than Mitt, remains to be seen. If it is Smart Growth then it should blend into the existing street-scape and architectural feel of the town and simply make the town feel geographically larger than before. However, as some, including Mitt, use the term Smart Growth it means only a development near a public transportation hub or, in some cases any transportation hub. If that is the case, and the development doesn't incorporate the planning and architectural concepts of Smart Growth, it may, as the original author is concerned, not fit in well with the rest of Westwood and cause traffic, quality of life, and town identity issues. Smart Growth, as basically coined by Duany and Plater-Zyberk, is supposed to be a comprehensive philosophy to planning and development that maintains local identity while allowing for necessary growth. However, the term has been thrown around loosly (like "Green") by politicians and, moreover, developers to the point where it often lacks meaning.
Good point, but ...
That particular part of Westwood seems to consist mainly of abandoned parking lots and warehouses, so in that sense, it's a perfect match. And that's one reason why it's a great place to plunk something like that, as opposed to "downtown" Westwood along Rte. 109.
Smart Growth
I am a big supporter of re-using or filling in abandoned or poorly utilized land with new development, but simply because they will be replacing something bad doesn't address the original author's concern over, essentially, whether it will be even worse. For an extreme example, if they replace it with a gated cookie cutter suburban development of 1000 houses that all connect into one big feeder road (Anti-Smart Growth), that sounds like it will be unlikely to fit in with the town and may make things worse than they are now. By contrast, if they put in a street grid that connects up with the existing town roads and plan a development that looks something like the existing town (similar mix of uses, size of roads, sidewalks, architecture, setbacks, etc.) it is likely to blend in without problems. The uncertainty over whether they will do that or not stems, in large part, from SwirlyGirl's comment below regarding Mass.'s fractured local systems for planning that prevent any vision or design from being overlayed on a regional basis. But that's our history in New England and I don't see it changing any time soon.
Another Bedroom for Boston or 128
I have been to Westwood. I've biked through it fairly often, actually, which gives me a better sense of the place than if I were driving around.
It looks like a suburb to me, not a small town. It is not geographically isolated in the least, it has a fair population density, a relatively high population overall, most people who live there don't work there etc.
Go out to western mass - places like Heath and Charlemont and New Salem are small towns. Westwood is a suburb. Just because the people who live there (and mostly do not work there) can't fathom anything ever changing doesn't change the fact that it is a bedroom community on a major highway system. Such places are far more subject to regionalized phenomena than internal phenomena, whether they like it or not. Thinking otherwise is dangerous for the community because it ignores how issues arising at various geographic scales beyond "town" exert their effects.
Small towns exist within 495
Lincoln, Weston, and Concord all feel like small towns to me. Lots of forests and fields interrupted by occasional houses. Only the few blocks of Concord Center have any 'urban' feeling to them.
Lincoln, etc.
They are still subject to much stronger regional influences than internal influences. Ergo, they are not small towns but suburbs. They are thus included in the Boston metropolitan statistical area by the US Census.
True
But we're talking East Coast small town here :-).
Hazards of "home town"="small town"
True, but that doesn't make them small even. I've heard people refer to Medford and Weymouth as "small towns", which is hysterically laughable. Either would have been the third largest city in Oregon in the 1970s, and Medford scores 88th nationally in population density - even with the unpopulated fells dumped in!
Therein lies the danger - people declare their civic unit to be soverign and isolated, and think accordingly, make policy accordingly, react accordingly, and fail to take on problems at the levels at which they arise if that level is external to the town. Massachusetts suffers from this on a large scale, as all these "small towns" that generate regional level issues of planning, pollution, and housing affordability collude to prevent effective solutions to these problems. This, in turn, impedes the regional economy upon which they all depend in large measure.
Yes, regional issues
That's a whole 'nother kettle of fish: Do we really need 351 separate police departments, fire departments, etc. At least with schools, we did see some consolidation. Ironically, Massachusetts was one of the leaders of the regionalization movement - back in the 19th century (but where is the MDC now?).
West Concord
It's the forgotten side of Concord. Not exactly urban, but more than just Thoreauvian bucolic.
They might, but those ain't them
Lincoln feels rural to me - but that's mostly a result of the obtusely crappy roads. Weston feels just like the snooty, rich white suburb it is. Concord is the only one of the three that at all resembles a small town - but it's largely just another suburb, like Lexington.
There's a difference between a small town and being a rural(ish) suburb. I've lived in lots of small towns, and one of the things they have that the burbs lack is an inward focus. In a real small town, you've got a downtown area - be it two blocks long - where you see neighbors every time you go. In a small town, when you want hardware, you go to the town hardware store (be that downtown or in a strip mall), not to the Home Depot off the city's freeway ring. In a real small town, you and your neighbors mostly work right there in the small town - they don't all start up their cars at 6 sharp and drive off to the city or its office parks. A real small town isn't dependent on the city.
Massachusetts is full of places that maybe used to be small towns, and aren't that anymore. I think if you want to find a real small town in MA, you'll have to go past 495.
Very true, Ron.
I grew up in Lincoln (and have never wanted to move back out there, which is another issue), which has always been split right in half by Route 2. While the part of Lincoln south of Route 2 is very much the way you describe it, the part of Lincoln that's north of Route 2, however, looks very much like a typical suburban development, with smaller single-family houses right smack next door to each other
Much of Weston is also the way you describe it, Ron, as is Concord.