Letter to the Planning Board, re: Town-Gown

After last week's Town-Gown presentation -- the chance for the universities to talk about their upcoming development ideas, I sent the following letter to the Planning Board --

Dear Mr. Russell and Members of the Planning Board:

I want to thank you for your Town Gown meeting last night, and I wanted to share some thoughts with you on it.  I do this because I didn't take the opportunity to offer public comment but have some views about the topics discussed. 

The first point I would highlight to you is the interest that these topics have in the City Council right now.  We have spent a lot of time talking and thinking about this issue and I am happy that last night provided the opportunity to share some communication back and forth.  



Councillor Reeves was very articulate is asking us to pose the big question - "What is our vision?" - as opposed to "What is our reaction to the proposal before us?"  This is particularly true with the universities, who are large institutions and major land holders with deep pockets. The hiring of a consultant to look at the Kendall/Central Square area is very important in this effort and helpful.  It is my hope that the consultant's work will be sufficiently bold and perhaps unexpected that it will afford us all the opportunity to really reexamine our assumptions about the area and what its possibilities and probabilities are.  (I should note that a consultant is also looking at the Harvard to Porter Square section of Massachusetts Avenue, a smaller scale to be sure, but for similar reasons.)



During the Planning Board's comments last night, I heard similar thoughts -- how do we meet the constant challenge of taking a more holistic view of the entirety of urban placemaking, while acknowledging the reality that places get built through private development.

One member talked about the need to step back and examine accumulated impacts of developments over time.  I agree with this, but I might put a slightly different definition to it.  We cannot simply look at inputs and outputs when we are talking about the complete picture.  While vehicle miles, parking requirements, road carrying capacity, among many other possible variables, are all important numbers to track and understand, the full scope of what we're talking about needs to be even more inclusive. 

Indeed, at least with regard to Kendall, in effect we are talking about the creation of a new city, and this means that urban design will prove to be as important as urban planning.  Because so much of what is going to get built is new, historical urban fabric will be much less of a driver of what is possible, plausible or even desirable in this area.  The challenge is to understand how proposed developments meet our expectations for a 21st century city.  To be able to do this, we need to have a better picture of what our expectations for a 21st century city are.  



The existing development in Kendall -- much of it not more that thirty years old -- comes under harsh criticism these days, but it is fairly clear to me that most of these buildings accomplished exactly what they were built to do -- enhance economic development at a time starting in the 1970s when it was hard to conceive that this area could be attractive to anyone.  But that was then, and this is now, and the baseline has changed.  In my mind, I refer to this as Envisioning City 2.0.  (In truth, we're probably already on version 3.2.)



This is where the Planning Board is of particular importance.  While the City Council is both capable and able to step back to look at the picture from the widest angle, the Planning Board has a more specific expertise to move from large considerations to much more specific considerations.  That capacity to understand, analyze and propose at different scales is a crucial piece to the work ahead.  I would also add that from my perspective, some of this work ultimately is about exploring where interests intersect.  People come to the table for different reasons and with different motivations.  It is only by describing where we can move forward together that we will move forward.



I thank you for your time and attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Sam Seidel