By William C. Shelton

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)

Last week I went to two of the meetings that have proliferated in response to the Green Line’s imminent arrival, the zoning overhaul, and proactive efforts by city planners.

Gehl Studio Gehl Sudio staff conducted the first one. They are the American operation of an internationally renowned urban design firm, retained by the city to solicit public participation in open-space planning. They are experts in studying people’s behavior in urban settings and designing public spaces that encourage security, safety, engagement, spontaneity, and human interaction.

After an insightful and stimulating presentation, they asked people to form small groups around maps of the city to discuss the qualities of their favorite Somerville places and how to create those qualities in designing new places.

Looking around the room, I noticed that something like 85% of those present did not live here ten years ago. I felt a surge of familiar sorrow that I imagine is always with me, but that I avoid wallowing in.

The people in the room were sincerely intent on contributing to the design of built structures that create conditions that older generations in Somerville much more effectively created through social structures. In addition to the city itself, old Somerville built community.

Its extensive networks of extended families, neighborhoods, churches, unions, fraternal orders, ethnic organizations, youth sports, political clubs, and civic organizations intertwined to weave a strong and resilient social fabric. Those interweaving relationships provided multiple ways for people to know, understand, and rely on each other.

Through them, citizens guided the young, swiftly helped neighbors in need, resolved conflicts, and maintained security without being aware that they were doing anything special. And their public spaces were safe, engaging, and rich with human interaction.

The people in the room were earnestly engaged in what I believe to be a righteous endeavor that will ultimately benefit all who live in Somerville and their descendants. Yet most of them were people who came to consciousness in a time and place where “community” has become a word to designate those who share a common demographic designation, or geographic location, or artificial kinship (like “online community”), rather than each other.

They are not particularly mindful of those who will not benefit from their efforts—those whom the Siege of Somerville has displaced or will displace. If they have an inkling of the trauma and “root shock” that the dispossessed endure, they probably imagine that it’s overblown.

The taken-for-grated dominant-culture ideology in which the newcomers became who they are assumes that market forces are equivalent to morally neutral forces of nature, while broken lives are unfortunate collateral damage; that market transactions are inviolate, while enduring human relationships are expendable.

‘Villens whose lived experience might dispute these assumptions while making substantive contributions to the open-space planning process were elsewhere. Many of them who post to Somerville Times’ blog are dismissive of such exercises. They view Somerville by Design and similar efforts as spending tax revenues on nonessentials that pander to affluent newcomers while making traffic slower, parking scarcer, and housing prices further out of reach.

I understand the hurt and anger that comes through in these posts—the perception that their city government has abandoned them like a nouveau riche husband who dumps his long-suffering wife in favor of a younger model. But I feel their absence in the planning of our city’s future to be tragic.

During this historic moment of great change in our city, their values, lived experience, wisdom, and institutional memory could enrich the process through which we are planning our shared urban existence. Newcomers would learn from Old Somerville’s participation, and we all might discover that what we share is more important than our differences.

So I would urge government officials, consultants, advocates, and neighbors to reach out and involve those who were born here and who built this city that has become so attractive to others.

I would also urge recognition of finite limits, which was my takeaway from the second meeting that I attended. It was the Union Square Civic Advisory Committee discussing how much and what kind of open space should be built into a revitalized Union Square.

The minimum amount deemed acceptable by most Committee members was 35%, while others wanted more. But in the same conversation, some members opposed tall buildings, echoing a conversation from the Union Square Neighbors listserv, where some object to building heights greater than four stories. Indeed, 35%-to-50% open space is common among local land transformations like Fan Pier, University Park, and North Point, because smart developers realize that well-designed amenities increase the value of their office and lab space. But they pay for open space by constructing tall buildings. The size and quality of Fan Pier’s Vertex Pharmaceuticals building, for example, gives it a higher assessed value than all of Somerville’s commercial real estate combined.

Union Square planning exercises thus far have encouraged stakeholders to hold out for their best wishes without considering that some are incompatible. So stakeholders have enthusiastically expressed desires to

• Maximize job creation;
• Maximize affordable housing;
• Minimize residential and business displacement;
• Improve mobility;
• Minimize traffic;
• Maximize open space;
• Maximize property tax revenues;
• Build a “civic block” and library that pays no taxes;
• Maintain “human scale,”
• And so on.

At the most basic level of tradeoffs, we must pay for our fond desires. And right now we can’t even pay for a sewer system that doesn’t regularly flood Union Square.

If stakeholders understand from the outset that tradeoffs must be made, they can discuss the relative importance of each objective, examine hard evidence, and formulate creative solutions that optimize outcomes as much as possible.

Last year I suggested to a developer and a city consultant one method to acquaint stakeholders with finite limits and begin this conversation (See Sidebar below: The Card Trick). I received no response.

Instead, participatory planning of Union Square began with a focus on visual preferences, perpetuating the anything-is-possible ethic, rather than focusing on how much of each use can and should be built, which acquaints stakeholders with finite limits.

The longer that Union Square planning is unburdened by constraints of physical, economic, and fiscal reality, the less opportunity and commitment stakeholders will have to produce creative solutions, and the more likely the Square’s future will be determined by forces beyond their influence.

The more that key constituencies are absent from the citywide planning process, the less vibrant and efficacious the resulting built environment will be, and the less cohesive, those who populate it.

The card trick: A consensus-building tool
*

Reaching consensus on a Union Square plan requires acquainting stakeholders with real-world constraints and enabling them to see the shared situation with each other’s eyes. If there is a commitment to keep listening to each other and reach agreement, conflict can produce creative solutions.

Objectives:

• Assess and understand key concerns across stakeholder groups

• Acquaint stakeholders with constraints and tradeoffs

• Create a basis for conversations that produce creative solutions

Methodology

• Prepare a stack of 2” x 3” cards. On each card write one of the objectives that stakeholders commonly name.
• Ask the respondent(s) to stack the cards in the order that is most important to them and then explain their reasons for that order. Discuss the opportunities for and constraints on their top choices.

• Tell the respondent, “Now I understand how you rank the objectives. But the first one may be as important to you as all the rest together. If you had $100 to spend on revitalization, how would you distribute it among these objectives? Why?

• If the respondent(s) represent(s) a group, ask them to take the cards with them and go through the same exercise with their group.

• Record the results to a publicly accessible database.

• Bring stakeholders together and facilitate a conversation through which they understand each other’s choices, external constraints, and trade offs.

• Use unassailable data to quantify constraints and tradeoffs so that discussion is not about whether they exist, but what to do about them.