Public Dialogue on the Seam

By John Rufo in collaboration with Form + Place

At Form + Place we have often characterized our design and planning efforts as focusing on the seam between private development and local municipalities. Having worked extensively with both types of entities, we have always felt uniquely positioned to use our design and planning expertise to create rich dialogue and craft a project vision that a community can support. In our recent efforts working for municipalities, a new kind of seam has emerged as an important inflection point in the master planning process. The interface between the municipal agency sponsoring the effort (boards, redevelopment authorities and staff to name a few) and the public citizenry (neighborhood groups, local organizations, business owners, landowners, and individual citizens) represents a key juncture at which trust is established, process is explored, consensus is built and ultimately a vision for the future is articulated.

Community History:

Each community that we work in has a unique history that has led to the point at which we are engaged to create a master plan, update a comprehensive plan, or update an urban renewal plan. The town or city may have historic inequities with roots in redlining and other structural social policies. Each community has typically gone through previous panning efforts with varying degrees of success. Sometimes specific projects built in the community have caused concern for citizens and municipal leaders alike, while others may be hailed as ideal examples of what development should look like and what it should do. Every community has a history of how the citizenry has interacted with the municipal agencies and how the agencies have interacted with each other. One of the critical roles of the design consultant is to facilitate dialogue on both sides of the community seam as well as facilitate intra-agency discussion and decision making.

Redlining Map impacting Winchester North Main Street Corridor

Balancing Big Picture Issues:

Every community wrestles with big picture issues that inform master planning efforts. These issues can often be seen as conflicting. For instance, the hopes and goals surrounding the idea of prosperity, higher property values and an improved built environment, can often be perceived as exacerbating gentrification. A broader range of housing options, including multi-family and affordable housing, can often be villainized as potentially burdening schools as well as transforming the character of a town – senior and empty nester housing perhaps less so. Municipal projects focused on improving the public realm, creating parks or more complete streets, are sometimes seen as competing with other efforts such as school construction, utilities upgrades, or sustainability efforts, when in fact these efforts can work hand in hand to serve a broader swath of the community and incentivize quality development.

Facilitating the Vision – LISTEN & RECORD / SYNTHESIZE & ENVISION

To solidify a master planning idea reflective of both community and municipal agency input, we utilize a two-step process of dialogue that we call LISTEN & RECORD / SYNTHESIZE & ENVISION. Listening & Recording sounds simple, but it involves putting aside any preconceptions of a place, and hearing what people are saying about their community. What are their concerns? What do they like? What do they hope for? Streets, corridors, and districts that we might think, on first observation, are run down or less than inviting, may actually be beloved by locals, while a seemingly thoughtful building in a particular neighborhood might be despised by neighbors and residents as too big or not welcoming. The planning board is often aware of the opinions of the community and is typically sifting through conflicting opinions about the issues and potential solutions. Through a range of facilitation methods – public presentations, community events, zoom presentations, online surveys – we solicit input from community members, steering committees, and municipal agencies alike as a critical data gathering exercise. Listening and recording all the nuanced ideas is crucial in understanding community concerns and developing a potential vision of the future.

Groveland MA – Community Dialogue – soliciting public ideas and feedback in collaboration with Emily Innes of Innes Associates.

Synthesizing & Envisioning is the culmination of a long process of community dialogue. Some aspects of the resulting proposal can be aided by resources such as Complete Street standards which provide valuable and flexible guidelines for developing a street section that accommodates multiple modes of transportation - vehicular, pedestrian, cycling, handicapped mobility, and public transit – across many varied contexts. These guidelines can be “plugged in” and customized for a given context to create livable walkable streets for all, but must also be applied to address the community’s detailed understanding of how their neighborhoods and streets work now and should work in the future.

Winchester North Main Street Corridor

Springfield Chestnut Street Corridor

Similarly building and site design should be applied with an appropriate response to scale and vernacular as well as taking into account future goals for the community. Questions like, should the building meet the sidewalk, or should it be set back? How tall should it be? What materials should it employ? How should vehicular and pedestrian access be sited? These issues can be visually modeled and discussed directly with the community.

Visualizations of buildings and sites responding specifically to scale and vernacular and community input

Putting forth a visual representation that synthesizes the ideas of an entire community - citizens and municipal leaders alike - is a very telling moment in any master planning effort. It is often the case that the first draft creates some “Ah hah” moments as well as honest concerns. One of the things we have learned is that written words describing a future are only partially effective. To solidify an idea about the potential of a community, visualizations of places and buildings is critical for eliciting real response and soliciting real feedback from the community.

Vision for a town green achieved through dialogue with a Redevelopment Authority and initial public input

What’s the Deliverable?

In the end, the resulting deliverable in this process can take on many forms. While the renderings themselves depict a kind of tangible vision for people to hold onto, the mechanism for achieving that vision is often changes to a zoning bylaw and design guidelines. These are meant to incentivize development while giving the community tools and controls to shape development to meet its needs. Similarly, creating a vision for open space and the public realm, helps catalyze the effort to create complete streets or public spaces that reinforce community presence, safety, and roadway equity.

Facilitating dialogue at the seam of community stakeholders and municipal agencies can unite opinions, galvanize ideas, and catalyze real change. Putting forth a vision for people to grasp and ultimately guide the tools to create that change, is an important step in the long arc of community development. Listening + Recording / Synthesizing + Visioning is the process we use at the seam to bring communities together.