It takes a certain amount of self-absorption and myopia to genuinely believe that these suburban locales (which, I can verify after knocking on doors for campaigns in several states, all basically look identical) are somehow unique snowflakes, with incomparable community values, visual aesthetic, and appeal to home buyers. It takes an additional dash of naivete to genuinely believe that a community one is about to move into will remain unchanged forever.
Snap.
I appreciate the link, though of course you pulled the most acerbic part!
Anyway, I hope people do take the bigger point into consideration.
Live by the acerb, die by the acerb!
Great post.
I have also knocked on doors for campaigns, in fact I knocked on doors in the location under discussion. It is simply not accurate to say that anyone is calling for Newtonville to be frozen in time. Rather I found that citizens have a plethora of ideas for what direction development in Newtonville (and Newton) should take.
Snap.
Emily,
I want to push on “It is simply not accurate to say that anyone is calling for Newtonville to be frozen in time.” I have more experience with Newton Centre than Newtonville, but my experience is that there are a substantial number of people who really don’t want fundamental change. Look at the rhetoric of the Newton Villages Alliance and the discussion of urbanization and the resistance to greater density.
Newton was once much less dense. It got to its current, almost full built out density. Can’t those who want to stop the trajectory towards greater density (or restart it) be thought to want to freeze things?
I’ve lived in Newton for about 15 years. In that time, I cannot think of one significant building project in or around a village center. It’s all happening or going to happen on the edges of the city: Needham Street, Boylston Street (Rte. 9), Riverside. Why is that?
“Can’t those who want to stop the trajectory towards greater density (or restart it) be thought to want to freeze things?”
They could be thought to want that… if you would rather operate via assumptions rather than, ya know, talking to people… I’m sorry if I sound annoyed, but too often this debate, like so many in Newton, gets simplified into selfish NIMBY jerks vs enlightened community-minded saints. Come to Newtonville and spend some time in our coffee shops and ask people what they think. Or stand in front of the Shaw’s. There is a wide variety of opinion, and most people are not selfish jerks.
@Emily: In the spirit of exaggeration. I’d say I agree 110 percent that all sides in all these debates going back, well probably, forever get unfairly placed into these boxes. Heck you and I have been in those boxes more than once (Don’t even get Jane started about the whole Crackpots/Newton North thing!)
Also absolutely agree that good people have good, sincere reasons why they might think something is inappropriate that has nothing to do with being selfish.
However, by all indications, Newton Villages Alliance, does seem to be entirely about freezing things. Or at least that’s all that one can reasonably infer from their (attribution free) website.
Please note, I’m not saying they’re selfish either. Elusive yes but not selfish.
But they do seem to be all about freezing everything.
@Greg, I will let Newton Villages Alliance speak for themselves. My beef is with the article posted above, which used the terms “self-absorption and myopia” and “naivete” to describe Newton residents. I don’t think that sort of name-calling elevates or even advances the debate in any way.
I would be happy to have a more in depth discussion about this or anything else with anyone who would like to come by my office hours… the last Friday of each month at the Senior Center from 9-10 (or whenever everyone leaves). There was a good crowd this morning!
If it helps any, I specifically said in the essay that I didn’t think it was NIMBYism — just implied it was something worse! And I probably pulled my punches because I could have devoted an entire political communications essay to analyzing the rhetorical devices being used in opposition to “urbanization.” So many code words, so little time.
But about knocking on doors — and I’ve knocked in Newtonville and Waban and anywhere else in the city, on top of many many thousands of doors in other states — my point was only that every community believes it’s unique and has something intangibly special about it. Which might not be entirely wrong but is certainly always less unique than imagined. It’s always amazing to hear people in different states apply a local name for some concept they think nobody else has.
Emily,
I’m sorry that you’re annoyed, but I’m not the one making assumptions. I have spoken to plenty of people, elected and otherwise. Again, my experience is mostly in Newton Centre, but there are common threads across the city. “Don’t want to be another Brookline …” “The people who want to urbanize …” “If you don’t like the way Newton is, move to Cambridge.” “We don’t need more density.”
I’m asking you to help me understand how folks who make comments like that shouldn’t be thought to want to freeze the city at a certain point in it’s development. More specifically, I want you to explain to me what change the people who expressly identify themselves as anti-urban and anti-density propose?
I’m with Bill. NIMBY isn’t really a useful term any more. It’s too loaded.
And, I don’t think selfish is the right term either. I want more density, because I want to live in that kind of Newton. That makes me selfish, too.
The Austin Street project has divided Newtonville and the city. There are people who are for it. There are people who are against it. A significant portion of the people against it, again by their own terms, don’t appear to be in favor of change. Why isn’t it fair to say that they want to freeze Newton in time?
“Why isn’t it fair to say that they want to freeze Newton in time?”
Because you’re making an assumption that that is what someone proactively wants, based on what your assumption about what they don’t want.
Back up a step: this whole “pro” Austin St, “anti” Austin St depiction is not helpful either. If you look at the Newtonville Area Council survey results, most respondents did not want an 80 unit 5 story development. Does that make them “anti” Austin St? But wait, a majority DID say they favor some sort of development, as long as it was smaller in scale. Does that make those same “anti” people also “pro” people?
Moral of the story: Assumptions = not helpful; listening to people to gauge what they actually think = much more helpful.
(And just for fun, what do you think of Beacon Hill residents? They seem to want to “freeze Beacon Hill in time”. Are you against Historical Districts? I live in the Newtonville one, does that make us one of the bad people “frozen in time”?)
@Sean – I think you might be oversimplifying a bit. When the Newtonville Area Council did a survey it revealed a spectrum of opinion about Austin St. There were no clear build-it, don’t-build-it camps – there was a continuous spectrum of opinion.
Yes, there are a (very) few voices that appear to be against nearly any change. A great number of the people who have reservations about the Austin St proposal were expressing specific concerns about details (height, square footage, mix of housing/retail, etc), not just generalized freeze-Newton-exactly-as-it-is attitudes.
You seem to be taking the mirror image position of the people you’re criticizing. “If something is change, it must be good” and “anybody who has questions must be against all change”.
As for the “don’t want to be Brookline” comment – that seems like a perfectly reasonable comment to me. It’s not something I’m worried about, both because I quite like Brookline and I don’t see any danger of Newton becoming Brookline. That aside, its just a personal opinion about the ideal path for Newton’s future development, not necessarily a head-in-the-sand-nothing-must-change attitude … unless you think all roads inevitably lead to Brookline 😉
Jerry and Emily,
At a certain point, you have to look at outcomes. You have to look at choices on the table, not the spectrum of possible options.
Fact: there are people who do not want the present Austin Street project to go forward. Regardless of the spectrum of alternative visions they may have, they share a common opposition to the Austin Street project in its present, preliminary form. They are against it. They are anti. That’s not an assumption.
Development isn’t going to proceed or not based on survey results, it’s going to proceed or fall by a vote of the Board, which will be informed by the political pressure that is or isn’t brought to bear one way or the other. Yes/no. Pro/anti. Change/no change.
Fact: there has been no development of the scope of the Austin Street project in a village center in at least a generation. The outcome of everyone’s extremely nuanced views on development is … our village centers frozen in time.
Am I for all change? I was a very vocal opponent of the Chestnut Hill Square development. Although I generally agreed with the intensity of the development (and in fact would prefer more residential density), the plan was (and the execution is) insufficiently integrated and too car-centric. It will be a blight on my end of the city for generations. I am torn on Riverside; it is a very difficult location for the intensity of the development, and the MBTA garage is a huge mistake. I was against (thought not vocally so) the fire station proposal in Newton Centre. The need there is to better consolidate the retail district and ring it with denser housing (or office), not to expand the retail. The Terraces on Langley is a terrible development and much worse than status quo ante. Need I go on?
The Austin Street lot is a perfect location for the kind of revitalizing development that the current proposal will bring. Do we really need to indulge the folks who really want some sort of change that isn’t proposed, isn’t feasible, isn’t likely? Are you going to argue that they are seriously pro-change?
Yes, there should be a continuation of what at least one person describes as quite extensive process. And, yes, the neighborhood should get to weigh in on factors like scope, design, mix of uses, &c. But, mark my words. There will be plenty of folks who won’t be satisfied by any concession or compromise, no matter how they answered a survey.
@Sean –
so by your measure that would seem to mean that you wanted “to freeze Newton in time” rather than you had specific problems with that project as proposed.
Jerry,
You’re moving the goal posts on me. You said that I appear to be in favor of any change. I’ve given you examples where I’m on the record as opposing development.
Now you cite one example to suggest that I must be for freezing Newton in time. So, here are examples of where I’ve been pro-change. Chestnut Hill Square, in a more integrated, more residentially-intense form. Some version of Riverside without the parking garage. Austin Street in generally the form it’s shaping up. Zoning change in Newton Centre (and elsewhere) that will promote three-story building in the commercial area. The Street | Chestnut Hill, though it’s unfortunate that it has so little connection to residential. The Waban Center proposal sounds promising.
Now, is your point is that maybe people are generally pro-change, but against this specific project on specific grounds, much like I’m generally pro-change, but have been against specific projects on specific grounds? Two things. One, in every case where I’ve been opposed to change, I have been actively in favor of a feasible alternative that was something other than the status quo. More importantly, the recent history of development in the city doesn’t support the notion that there are a lot of people out there mostly in favor of change to the village centers, but disagreeing among themselves on the direction to take. If so, you’d see a lot more proposals and at least some development.
Outcomes matter. At some point, someone arguing that Newtonians aren’t looking to freeze our village centers in time have to explain how our village centers got to be frozen in time.
@Sean – No, I don’t think you’re either “in favor of any change at all” or that you “want to freeze Newton in time”. I’m just pointing out that I think you’re being a bit simplistic when you dismiss those who don’t agree with you as “wanting to freeze Newton in time”.
As for the frozen’ness of our villages … I’ve only been in Newton for five years. In that time, I only remember one village center project getting nixed (fire station in Newton Centre). So it doesn’t seem like we can chalk up the “frozen’ness” of our villages to citizen opposition.
A whole group of us canvass about every six months for some election or another and have been for years, so a lot of people have pretty good sense of community sentiment about a lot of issues. I’d be careful about making assumptions about what people think based on one conversation on their doorstep during an election campaign.
Also, I’d think twice about using that survey as data. 10% of Newtonville residents responded to it, which is an abysmal rate. Another group may use the results in a different way – that 90% of the residents don’t care enough about the project to bother to fill in a survey, let alone attend a meeting. However, that wouldn’t be accurate either and lots of people would object proponents using it to make that point.
Love that the crackpot incident is still a part of blog memorabilia! It was right up there with the Waban Village parking meter caper. It was Terry Malloy’s heyday. 🙂
Jerry,
Anyone who knows both of us knows that you are a much kinder, less cynical soul then I. You give people the benefit of the doubt. You take survey answers at face value.
I have listened to too many people on the subject of development in our village centers. The change people will support is too slight to really call it change. Or, the conditions they put on change makes it not feasible.
More generally, getting back to Bill’s post, much of the rhetoric concerning development in Newton is nostalgic. Preserve character. Preserve housing types. Preserve scale.
In places where the impact of a project is as big as Austin Street and in what people consider a shared space, this nostalgia leads to the kind of opposition to development we’re seeing. Where there is not such an impact, or there is no need for city approval, you get ad hoc pimples like the kind of teardown/McMansion development you discussed in your post and great hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth. And, at the edge of the city, you get the big development that is greased by 40B or the promise of tax revenue.
Meanwhile, attempts at pro-active, growth-oriented planning in our neighborhoods or the centers — like the effort to revitalize Newton Centre — are strangled in the crib.
Ultimately, I think Bill has it right. In their rhetoric and action, people in Newton display a desire to maintain Newton as it is, despite the world changing around us.
Maybe you’re right Sean.
I’ve just got bombarded with complaints about the changes I just made to the “About Village14” page.
We live in a democracy. So, ultimately, if you want to see change of some kind, I believe you need to make the case for it. Denigrating those who you are trying to bring around as NIMBY, “frozen in time” and selfish is one approach at persuasion… I don’t think it’s going to be the most effective approach, but what do I know? I’m new at this politician stuff.
There was substantially more vicious denigration in that column in this week’s TAB, wherein “development” was made out to be some kind of atrocity and all its supporters of any stripe were automatically maligned as some sort of evil.
And the position that the city is “already the right size” is 100% the same as saying it should be frozen in time. There’s no functional distinction.
My great-grandmother used to stand around on Chestnut Street in Waban moaning and complaining — and threatening to move out — as all the open fields became houses. I grew up not being able to imagine it looking any other way. People bitterly complained at the idea of converting 7x-daily rail service into light rail running every 10 minutes through Waban, the Highlands, the Centre, etc… And I grew up not wanting to be more than 5 minutes away from a trolley. People *always* complain about everything, as if there weren’t previous waves of changes before things were the way they were. I’m just asking people to look beyond one project at a time and start contributing positively toward suggesting preferences for a broader vision or even possible development ideas. And the vision can’t be “no change” or “no more growth” because that’s just impossible.
My preferred vision happens to favor density as a more efficient and environmentally friendly use of community space that will protect us from sprawl and loss of green spaces. Density would mean less driving, too. Legitimately historic things can and should be preserved. But not the whole city like a time capsule. That’s the fastest way to go into a decline and then a free-fall.
And I’m tired of people trying to not only define the city as a certain point in time or aesthetic but also trying to assert that everyone agrees with them or came here for the same reasons or shares the same vision of the future. There is a very loud, non-majority faction in the past eight or so years generating an echo chamber of opposition to everything on every policy area, well beyond just development. They don’t represent all of us, and they don’t get to decide who’s “real Newton” or whatever. I don’t either. Nor do we get to decide what the “right size” of the city is because that will be determined by future population shifts one way or the other. The city is an entity that was here before we were and will continue to exist after all of us are gone. We need to be prepared for all likely future scenarios, and we need to think about what scenarios we would ideally prefer.
Jerry – Please tell me you made those comments up.
Gail – Me? Make stuff up? The Jason Blair of Village14?
Contrary to what Bob says above I am not one who would like Newton to be frozen in time. What I do want is for all new development in Newton to be done legally and without negatively impacting me or my lifestyle. I live near Parker Street in Newton Centre and my life has been extremely negatively impacted by the new traffic lights and patterns that have been installed here to accomodate the Chestnut Square Village. Parker Street is a literal parking lot every morning now that they have changed the traffic lights and walk signals to cycle automatically every few minutes instead of changing when a car or person is actually at the intersection. They ( I don’t know who) have even taken away the ability for the school children (and others) to be able to press the walk signal buttons at the corner of Parker and Wheeler Road for some unknown reason? You now have to stand at the intersection and wait for the traffic signals to cycle and eventually they turn to a walk signal. It has created a very dangerous and scary situation for anyone trying to cross Parker Street. I am telling you this because this is an example of a negative impact to new construction and development. I work very hard for a living and don’t enjoy this new climate that seems to exist where I have to fight tirelessly to protect my property and rights when the things that I am protecting against should be automatically safeguarded against if people were doing their jobs correctly. People wonder why some people in Newton get so upset about that $240K wall that was illegally built and why can’t we just let the guy slide? The reason we can’t is because it sends a message that we are complacent and that we don’t care if the rules are being followed and this creates a very dangerous climate. Safeguards need to be in place and people need to be held accountable or else Newton will get a very bad reputation with the developers and might already have it that they can come here and do whatever they like and we will aid and abet them 100% in their endeavours to profit off of us at our own demise and peril.
I meant to say Bill not Bob in my above comment. Another point that I would like to add is that people are so busy nowadays that they often have zero time to pay attention to zoning issues or to even read the local paper or go to a meeting at city hall. In order for people to be able to live in Newton they usually have dual income households and are often raising families and do not have time to get involved with politics. What the masses do notice is when they are taking a ride down Needham Street and it takes them twice as long to get to their destination as it did a couple of years ago or if they are driving their kids to school on Parker Street and it is now a 40 minute drive from Newton Centre to Oak Hill Middle School instead of a 20 minute drive as it was a year ago prior to the new lights being installed. By the time the general public experiences the negative impact that often comes with new development it is too late as the project has already been built. There is a reason that all this 40B development is all of a sudden happening in Newton and that developers are flocking here and it is because they are being welcomed with open arms and have been met with very little resistance up until now. Knowledge is power people.
NewtonGal $\equiv$ NIMBY.
Nobody is taking your property and nobody is trampling on your rights. All of your petulant complaints are about impacts on your convenience, not your rights. There is a rather substantial difference between the two. Typical self-absorbed Newtonian.
Yep, Needham Street is indeed slower, because there are so many great new things, of which I avail myself regularly, injecting money into the local economy.
The solution I’ve found is: budget more time to drive down Needham Street!
I’m way less concerned about commercial development impacts than the impacts of some of these private one-lot residential violations that the city and everyone ignores. Obviously the wall got attention, but what about the scores of houses built in substandard lots and/or on wetlands, thus affecting everyone’s drainage, etc.? Owners/developers just say “whatever, I’ll pay the (tiny) fine” and keep going. There’s no real enforcement. And that’s not some grand plan by the city or “business interests.” It’s just individual people messing things up for everyone. Much of this problem could have been avoided by a policy favoring residential density than one favoring sprawl, which encourages people to build new houses on lots they shouldn’t instead of building up existing areas for more capacity.
And saying things like “What I do want is for all new development in Newton to be done legally and without negatively impacting me or my lifestyle” is kind of silly when you actually stop to read it out loud. That was exactly what I meant by suburban “self-absorption” and “myopia.” It’s not all about you and your particular lifestyle. We’ve all got a stake and we’ve all got to work together to live together as a community. If my tree becomes a problem for my neighbors, I have to be willing to take down that tree, even if I really like it. And so on. Nobody gets zero effects on their “lifestyle.” Not even zero *negative* effects. If that’s your thing, it might be time to try to find some land in the middle of nowhere in Alaska where no one will bother you with anything. Assuming there’s any left. It’s getting pretty crowded in this country.
NewtonGal, your tirade on traffic signals on Parker Street doesn’t even make sense. The signal at Wheeler is probably one of those 50+ year old signals that barely works. Indeed it is annoying that it seems to stop for a pedestrian signal every cycle, but how does that create danger, and how is it related to development? Instead of a deliberate change, perhaps it’s broken, like so much more of our infrastructure? Most traffic on Parker the morning is commuters, people who drive their kids to school, and people cutting through Newton from other towns like Needham. The signal at route 9 was needed because it was one of the most dangerous intersections in the city without it. Nobody is happy about the backups, but it’s the volume of traffic that is the problem.
The signal at Wheeler is probably one of those 50+ year old signals that barely works.
I can vouch for this, I remember it a good 40-odd years ago. And come to think of it, they didn’t work terribly well then, either.
Just throwing some grist into the mill.
I will explain why the new traffic signal set up at the corner of Parker St. and Wheeler Rd. has recently become extremely dangerous. First of all there are hundreds of school children who walk on this street Mon-Fri so it is a heavily traveled pedestrian crosswalk. At some point during the last year the signal buttons on the poles that a person depresses in order to get the light to change to a walk signal were removed. They do not exist at any of the four stations at this intersection any longer. There is no signage explaining this new situation. In the past the way a “walk” signal would be activated would be by depressing the button. Now the way a “walk” signal occurs is on a timed basis 24/7 per day where the traffic lights and walk signals alternate automatically throughout the day whether it is 6AM or 2AM or a Monday or a Sunday. In the past if I wanted to take a left onto Wheeler Road from Parker Street I would approach the light and the sensors underground would know my car was there and it would signal the light to change. Now I have to sit at that light until the cycling from green, to yellow, to red to walk to walk flashing etc. reaches the signal that I need to proceed. Motorists have now figured out the fact that when the “walk” signal is flashing at night or on a weekend that chances are there is no person trying to cross the street at those times of day so they just zoom through the light having no fear of hitting anyone. The motorists in essence have been desensitized to the “walk” signal at Parker and Wheeler because unless it is during school days or hours there aren’t a lot of people crossing then. This means when I am crossing at dusk while walking my dog I am taking my life into my hands literally. I have spoken to many of my neighbors about this and they all agree with me. It has become a very serious and dangerous problem. Does anyone know how I can get it corrected and to get it back to the way it was before? This also ties into development in Newton in that it was the developer’s of Chestnut Hill Square’s money that was used to do all these road “improvements”. I read that in the TAB after the city tore out the curbs that were installed in Newton Centre last summer because they realized that they were hindering and not helping. I read that people were upset that money was being wasted like this even though it was the developer’s money and not city funds. Does anyone know how I can get this traffic light problem corrected before there is a serious accident?
I’d start with a 311 request via the city’s web site. If that doesn’t go any where, try the Traffic Division in the city’s Dept of Public Works
The bubble factor’s at work with a lot of the complaints – the idea that there’s traffic only in Newton and everywhere else, things are just fine. In truth, traffic is a problem everywhere. The drive on 128 between the Mass. Pike and Rte 93 in the last 5 years has become a nightmare. Traffic in Needham is awful. Traveling down Comm. Ave. in the AM is a disaster. Beacon St. is no better. What about the drive to the Cape or to NH/Maine? Rtes 3 and 95 going north and south are often parking lots. Don’t even talk to me about the Cambridge/Somerville area.
It drove me nuts, so I took out a map of the areas where I travel regularly and mapped out alternate routes that aren’t packed with cars, and are often more scenic. My other suggestion is to download the Beat The Traffic app. It lets you know when a particular route is jammed so you can find an alternate route. As for the school drop off, the kids can walk the last stretch so you don’t get into a traffic jam. I hate traffic as much as everyone else, but there are solutions we can all make use of to make life easier.
Going way off topic here, but here goes…
The “MassWorks” projects resulting from Chestnut Hill Square along the Parker Street corridor, love them or hate them, were the entirely new signal at Parker & Route 9 and the redesign and modernized signal at Beacon/Centre/Cypress (the curb debacle, discussed here at length, was very small $-wise and a most misunderstood part of the project) There are two entirely new modern pedestrian-only crossings, mainly for school children, on either side of route 9. There was absolutely no mitigation project at Wheeler, so I do not believe it is accurate to say that whatever you are observing there is a result of any development. Please prove otherwise.
What you describe does sound horribly broken, but still may have been a temporary workaround for a broken pedestrian signal. Centre/Walnut was like that too, until recently when MassWorks repaired that intersection also. The “loops” in the road to detect traffic also often break and are difficult to fix (e.g. West Newton) It would certainly be prudent to contact someone to get the story. You’ll have a tough time reaching the transportation director. He’s understandably a busy guy. Why not ask your Alderman to do it?
That’s difficult to visualize.
Thank you for the suggestions. I will make some calls next week and see where I get. I know that my three Ward Aldermen live near me and must have traveled Parker Street and Wheeler Road quite often to get to their homes in the last year. I would be surprised if they haven’t already noticed the dramatic changes in the traffic lights at Parker and Wheeler already but I will definitely bring it to their attention. Up until last week there were hardly any pedestrian lines painted in the four crosswalks at the Parker/Wheeler intersection as they had faded out but luckily a road crew showed up one night and painted some. Thanks again and sorry for any deviation from the topic at hand.
I’m almost afraid to reveal it but there is an easy way to bypass the commercial on Needam Street to get from one end of town to the other, but of course when I want to go to Marshall’s, TJMaxx, or get soup I concentrate on my destination, plan for traffic, (google maps will almost always let you know how much and with Waze added others tell about hold ups) listen to the radio and assume everyone else there needs to be somewhere as much as I do. We all must remember that we are all on a particular road for a purpose – to get somewhere and with cool heads we will. Any addition to the community will effect someone’s life style, but additions there will be. I’ve not had to deal with the traffic signal problem, but I do know of many that operate with programmed changing, rather than having a button for pedestrians, but a lot of them change to a blinking yellow after a certain time. Don’t know if that will help, but it’s a thought. I have dealt with lots with bad drainage twice and that’s a real pain.