Should all the villages look the same?

Last week, the TAB ran a pretty detailed story on the outreach event for the Mayor’s Mixed Use Task Force, held on July 29th.  It’s posted here.  Thanks to their team for giving the MUTF the attention it deserves.

One of the notes from the meeting gave me pause, though:

Residents present said it was important for building designs to be similar in each village so the city would look like one entity, rather than creating 13 separate “islands” independent from one another.

All the villages should look the same?  

That would seem to ignore their different histories, demographics, transportation contexts, and so on. I’ve heard our city planners and elected officials say something like “our villages are different, and we should embrace that” dozens of times.  This drive for homogeneity was new to me.

Andrea Kelley, who serves on the Newton Villages steering committee, was at the meeting, and facilitated the break-out group focused on design.  Homogeneity didn’t make their list of priorities, thankfully.  Here’s an excerpt from her notes for the evening:

Values/qualities to enhance and issues to consider:

• pedestrian connections
• single site with multiple architects/designers v. one monolith
• height as a value not an absolute, benefits of bulk and compact
• density relates to context
• public transit connections
• respect for the environment
• sustainability
• independent studies (eg. Not by the developers but paid for by them) for impacts on traffic and water/sewer/storm drain/sanitary systems- how to design well for these
• connectivity to, protection of and access to natural resources
• village sense
• context and connections, integration with the existing
• placemaking

Their top four priorities were:

• Pedestrian connections
• Village sense
• Context and connections/integration
• Placemaking

Here’s hoping that the TAB’s reporting on homogeneity as a value for our mixed use projects was a fluke, and the idea doesn’t survive to the MUTF’s final report.  Knowing the group involved, Phil Herr and others, I trust that it won’t.