A few weeks ago, I blogged about Westwood Station and whether the massive development project would create an Edge City out of my small town. Since then, I’ve written a review of Somerville architect Paul Lukez’s book, Suburban Transformations, which I see as the kind of vision we should have now instead of later. Lukez’s book describes an approach to repairing the growth of the past and developing in a way that creates memorable and sustainable places.
However, I went back and read Edge City: Life on the New Frontier and my impression is that much has changed since 1991, both in the dynamics of economic development and in the attitudes and values of people in general.
I remember what it was like in 1991 to see these exciting metro areas appearing at the intersections of major highways, typically anchored by a mall of some sort. In 1999, I bought a condo at the intersection of 580 and 680 in Pleasanton, CA for under $200K and watched, over the course of a few years, the rapid expansion of the Peoplesoft campus and the development of housing and retail on the desert wasteland between Pleasanton and Dublin. For a year and a half, I commuted 40 miles into Mountain View. It sucked.
The Edge City model depends on so many attitudes that I believe are becoming incompatible with what young, creative people desire today. Garreau’s book is full of painfully dated social commentary, justifying the culture of the automobile, such as
For better or for worse, there are no geological reasons that plenty of oil should not be available throughout the twenty-first century. There is no petrochemical analyst around who thinks there is any supply-and-demand reason–other than war–that the price of oil should go higher than $30 a barrel in constant dollars in this generation…
He also interviews a couple from New York City who moved out to suburbia and are thrilled with having a house in the middle of nowhere…I don’t want to review the whole book here, but my point is that attitudes have changed and what seemed like a cool fancy new place in 1991-2000 is not cool today.
I, for one, do not want to live in a big cheap house in the middle of nowhere. When I see a massive office complex rising from once pastoral lands, I am disgusted by the waste and consumption of our environment. I also discovered, living in such a place, that the kinds of jobs that accrete to such campuses are mostly corporate, cubicle organized workslums to go along with the overpriced, generic, manicured, culturally-desolated slums of consumption that park consumers within a short drive of big box stores where they can salve their empty lives with a constant stream of new purchases and spending.
But I do not fear development; I actually believe many others share my lifestyle view and the economic realities of the marketplace are adapting to those needs. A mall is not enough to anchor a new city anymore.
All this got me to thinking that while Westwood Station may be a very planned and very large development that will not likely be very adaptive to the needs of the community…it may also be only the first step. Instead of thinking of a Target as being an “anchor store” in a mixed use development, perhaps Westwood Station will be the anchor to something much larger…unplanned…and unanticipated.
In Dedham, a more retail-oriented Legacy Place is planned. Residents and businesses continue to sue to attempt to slow down Westwood Station. Residents who live near the development fear the traffic and can easily envision the nightmare of 50,000 cars a day dumped onto neighborhood streets.
I fear the traffic too…not just because of the inconvenient mess it would create, but because it is a fundamental infrastructural obstacle that, coupled with the lack of any authoritative regional dispute resolution to help Westwood, Dedham, and Canton–the abutting towns–work out collaborative solutions, seems to doom the larger potential of what is being created here.
In Garreau’s book, he identifies several areas in Massachusetts that should have developed as edge cities but ran into insurmountable infrastructural obstacles. Burlington succeeded (although see Paul Lukez’s book about how that success was more and less than hoped for), but just looking at a map, you would expect to already see a Tyson’s Corner office development rising from the confluence of 95/93/128–essentially where Westwood Station will be. Why hasn’t it already happened?
The developer’s answer would be that we lacked the right mix…that you can’t have the upscale retail stores without some big stores like Target to bring in the shopping masses. Maybe. So let’s play that out a few more years and see what to expect…
Westwood Station, by itself, is not big enough to be a fully functional municipal unit. It can be a really big, really nice mall. But not everyone can drive there. If this project succeeds in creating a destination place, then I believe you will see companies looking to locate near this and developers looking to create more housing. Some of the needs will be met by Dedham’s Legacy Place and nearby apartment complexes that are springing up, but if this thing starts to really take off, I think you will need millions more square feet of office space and thousands more housing units. The Neponset Reservation blocks growth to the northeast…Canton blocks growth to the south. An established residential neighborhood blocks expansion north. The only path is to follow University Ave into Norwood and tie in with Route 1.
For people already worried about traffic and growth, I’m describing a nightmare scenario. The commuter train that is such a feature of this development is already running at capacity–I know; I’ve ridden to Boston many times standing in the vestibules. If we had thousands of new workers in Westwood…how long do you think it would take the T to add more cars and trains? Route 128 is being widened–another triumph of common sense (add lanes to reduce traffic) over logic (more lanes = more cars = more traffic)–which will surely increase traffic problems even without Westwood Station.
So where does this all leave us?
- if the new urbanist design is truly a solution to the problems that have limited growth in the past…then we may be unleashing more than even the most optimistic planners contemplate
- ultimately, people will determine the success or failure of this project. People move to Westwood because of the schools and because it offers the best of both worlds: easy commute to Boston, small-town/rural character. People today do not want to live near a mall or big box store mecca. They want a sense of place. If Westwood Station creates a new kind of a sense of place, it will draw in new people, new business and new economic development.
- Traffic is not a simple problem to be solved and put away. Maybe a flyover ramp is a good idea. Maybe narrowing Blue Hill and Canton Street, putting in sidewalks, crosswalks, etc. would help. We could make a list of hundreds of things to do, but the list will never end. How do we make sure a list like that is made and checked over before, during, and after development begins?
- We need some kind of regional dispute resolution process. There is the Metropolitan Area Planning Commission but at the end of the day, it seems to me you have towns fighting each other and neighborhood associations defending their turf without a lot of trust in whatever existing process there is.
- Nature finds a way. Or perhaps, Developers find a way. Nobody is going to be able to plan everything out in advance. If things take off, one day you just wake up and find a new asphalt landscape and thousands of grumbling commuters. Or, you find the Dedham Mall.
When I look at the development in Westwood…it seems so wasteful. We have a major high tech company hidden away behind a Mercedes dealership on Route 1. We have a small industrial park on Route 1 under an overpass. Analog Devices is just across Route 1 in Norwood. Scattered throughout town there are old office buildings and random businesses. I think if we could solve the challenges of growth, we could evolve the town into the kind of place where creative knowledge workers could live, work, and play. It will remain nice to be able to hop a train into Boston, but wouldn’t it be great to ride a bike 2 or 3 miles to a start up company on University Ave, eat lunch at a nice restaurant in the station, and still run into people you know on the streets?