By Douglas Yu

Somerville by Design took its act to East Somerville, engaging in a dialog between city planners and residents.
– Photo by Douglas Yu

When it comes to redeveloping and improving the community’s culture and vibrancy, but also preserving its unique characteristics, East Somerville’s residents and local businessmen were very enthusiastic about sharing their ideas.

Somerville by Design came to East Somerville last week. The initiative has a cutting-edge approach to community planning that crowd-source residents to solve challenging physical planning and urban design issues.

The Mayor’s Strategic Planning and Community Development staff announced that they are hoping to release the plan for redesigning Gilman Square Station next week. They also said that Ball Square was waiting on some changes to its design.

“With planning, we can create predictable outcomes, the outcomes that are more oriented to what the community is looking for,” said Director of Planning George J. Proakis.

Proakis, who had been involved in Somerville by Design before, said they were trying to bring family, friends and the whole neighborhood together, developing a more sophisticated plan for the whole city.

Besides the changes that Somerville by Design has made, Proakis also acknowledged several other local planners’ contributions. “In 2006, East Somerville Main Streets performed, striving for the business community to get here. In 2007, East Somerville Community Cooperation took a planning called, East Somerville Initiative,” Proakis said.

East Somerville Main Streets is a non-profit organization, dedicated to rebuilding the East Broadway District as the heart of the East Somerville community and as a vibrant destination. The board president of Main Streets, Kat Kaminski and Executive Director, Carrie Dancy also attended the crowd-sourcing event. They offered some proposals as well.

“I think we need clear posters to tell neighbors what they can get out of this event,” Kaminski said. “[The existing posters] are really visually-appealing, but they are not articulate. Unless you know what that means, you don’t know what it means.”

Dancy pointed out that unclear communication was not the only problem, regarding how future posters would be designed.

“Somerville is very ethnically-diverse. So multi-lingual signs, posters and bulletin boards are very necessary,” Dancy said.

During the crowd-sourcing event, each person was asked to give his or her opinions about possible approaches that could be adopted to redesign East Somerville.

“The idea is getting people to know the circumstance in which our community can healthily develop,” Proakis said. “We’ll see how those ideas fit along with everything else.”

Proakis especially talked about SomerVision Numbers, which means the goals that Somerville by Design may help to achieve in the future, such as adding 30,000 news jobs and 6,000 new housing units.

The goals excited East Somerville residents, but certain challenges remained.

“Sometimes, planners don’t know what to do, and neighbors are not allowed to design their community,” Proakis said. “The resident districts don’t really provide predictable outcomes. So we are putting together a consulting team in June 18. Business owners can reach out to our team.”

Even though there are challenges out there, East Somerville residents felt optimistic about the community’s continuing growth. “We are still going to develop, because we are close to transportation. And the infrastructure is great,” Kaminski said. “We also need to embrace the unique heritage, since every one is welcomed here.”

Alderman Maureen Bastardi, offered an applause-winning comment.  “We need a better working relationship with Boston when it comes to Sullivan station and lower Broadway.” Bastardi also shared her concern that business owners were missing in the community.

Somerville residents are the final decision makers of what their own community should be like, according to Proakis.

“It would be helpful to give a picture of what people what and what people don’t want,” Proakis said. “The final decisions really come from the residents. Obviously, we have certain things that limit us, like budgets. We want to fit [design ideas] in what’s already going on.”

More Somerville by Design’s public meetings and events will be held during the coming months in order to help come up with better design and redeveloping ideas.

“It’s really exciting,” Proakis said. “We can definitely get some great ideas out of Somerville by Design. And we’ll do everything we can to make them work.”