If you have time to click on this link at grist:
The key to fighting climate change and mortality? Walkable cities.
read the intro, and then watch the short video — I believe that’s a 4 minute time commitment in total — you’ll find it worth your while. An excellent summary of what makes a place walkable, how it’s achieved, and what it’s good for. Enjoy and then get out there and get to it!
WBUR reports today on a Metropolitan Area Planning Council presentation to state lawmakers on the dire need for housing supply to sustain the economy:
By 2040, Massachusetts will need about half a million additional residential units, analysts told lawmakers Tuesday as they advocated for increased housing production to go along with the state’s growing economy.
Metropolitan Area Planning Council assistant data services director Tim Reardon said most of this housing demand will be in urban areas, and two-thirds of it will be for multifamily housing, a type of development limited or discouraged in much of the state.
(emphasis added).
We recognize that development to accommodate new residents is often a controversial topic — in Roslindale and just about everywhere else in Greater Boston. Even where people recognize the crisis in general, they would much prefer that the solution happen somewhere else. But the need is there and the development will happen whether we like or not.
We do, however, have a critical choice to make: are we going to add another million cars to our already fully maxed out transportation infrastructure (2 cars per new housing unit) — another three or four million free parking spaces[1]? An extra hour (or two) added to the car commute downtown from inner ring suburbs?
Or we can go in another direction, and build with a dedicated focus on pedestrian/bike/transit access, and enhance all those other modes of moving around so that people who prefer not to be stuck in a motor vehicle for hours a day aren’t forced to.
Development, walkability, and vibrant streets and communities all can go hand-and-hand. Rather than fight to stop every new project, we believe we should speak up to make every new project better for the community. We’re working on some development principles that we think will advance this goal, and hope our neighbors will join us in refining and then advancing those principles.
Sad News from Wapo Taco, a quirky, tasty, and affordable two-person taco shop that has been with us for nearly two decades. They are closing at the end of the month due to a substantial rent hike:
TO ALL OF OUR CUSTOMERS
It is with great sadness and heavy hearts, that we make this announcement.
After 18 yrs. We have decided to close THE WAPO TACO. The building we are in, was recently sold. The new Landlords have doubled our rent. In order for us to stay, we would have to pass that on our customers, with a substantial price increase. We don’t think that would be fair to all of you. We would like to thank all of our customers for all of your love and support over the past 18 yrs. We value the many friendships and memories we’ve made throughout the years…..
Our last day of business will be Saturday, June 27th….
Thank you all again it has been a wonderful ride.
Dianne and Lorenzo
This announcement comes on the heels of the closure of several other long-standing Roslindale businesses: most recently Vouros bakery, before that the Select Cafe (f/k/a Emac and Bolio’s), and the more short-lived Sugar Restaurant.
These losses to our community are always followed by hand-wringing and no small amount of antipathy directed to greedy landlords, accompanied by a legitimate fear of large-chain invasion. And there’s nothing wrong with a little bit of this, but to re-appropriate the words of Joe Hill (often mis-attributed as his last): Don’t Mourn, Organize!
Rising commercial rents and the related shifting demographics in the neighborhood will inevitably result in some unfortunate (and perhaps avoidable) casualties. But there are other factors at work here too, that we can do something about. Every single entrepreneur we’ve heard from who has considered opening a storefront in Roslindale in recent years has expressed concern about the lack of daytime foot traffic. Although Wapo Taco was open most days from 12pm to 8pm, anecdotal observation suggests the shop was slow for most of that time, and often empty.
We don’t know any details of the restaurant’s balance sheet, but it’s easy to imagine that they could have survived a substantial rent increase with a 2x increase in sales. They certainly had the production capacity for it. Lack of foot-traffic (especially daytime) was also a concern of the previous owners of the Boston Cheese Cellar, which closed in the spring but recently reopened with a new owner and extra gusto. Moreover, the 2010 Tufts University Study, Destination: Roslindale Village, A Roadmap for a Vibrant Village, also highlighted the need for increased foot traffic to improve and invigorate the neighborhood economy.
So what do we do to increase foot traffic so we can retain businesses like Wapo Taco and attract others that are badly needed (a fancy espresso shop!)? There is no single strategy for success, but all of WalkUP Roslindale‘s priorities will help get us there: increased density close to the square (perhaps the #1 need); an improved pedestrian environment (via infrastructure, design, enforcement, and cultural changes); better bike infrastructure (think Hubway and an off-road bike highway to the orange line); improved (and more affordable) transit connectivity; as well as neighborhood marketing.
It’s worth noting that there is no way we can achieve these goals through more auto-centric build-out: there is no practical place to add more free parking, and even if we could, at most it would bring a handful more people into the village while further exacerbating the already existing street gridlock at peak hours. Abolishing unlimited free parking could actually help quite a bit, but that’s a topic for a future blog entry. It will be much more effective to find ways to let people who want to live here do so affordably, and enable those who want to get to the village other than by car do so safely, thereby freeing up parking spots and easing traffic congestion for others who cannot or will not travel other than by car.
See also this discussion about Wapo Taco’s closing on Universal Hub.
Today’s Globe features a front-page article Lack of homes on market has prices rising, sales slipping, highlighting the housing shortage in Boston and environs:
The number of single-family houses for sale in Massachusetts plunged 20 percent in April from a year earlier, the 39th consecutive month that inventories have declined from the previous year. That’s according to data released Wednesday by the Massachusetts Association of Realtors. …
In some high-demand places, inventories plunged 30 percent or more from a year earlier. In Boston, the number of single-family homes for sale fell 31 percent, in Brookline 35 percent, and in Somerville 40 percent. In Cambridge, the number of condos on the market dove 56 percent, according to the real estate association.
No surprise here. The Boston-area economy is growing much faster than the housing supply, and the crunch is exacerbated by a multi-generational shift toward living in cities and in particular car-less (or less-car) based lifestyles.
To sustain the region’s economic growth, avoid crippling commute times, and improve the quality of life in the city, we need to build a lot more housing. And the only feasible way to achieve that is with increased density (recall that Boston’s population is still far below what it was sixty years ago).
As one of Boston’s smaller neighborhoods, Roslindale can only play a small part in solving this macro problem. But we can be part of the solution–there are surface parking lots near the village that could be homes for people, not just cars. And much of Rozzie Square and areas immediately adjacent the T is filled with very low-rise buildings (often just one story!). With proper transit-oriented/pedestrian-and-bike-friendly development, the addition of a few hundred residents will enhance the vitality of the neighborhood and the shopping district. Let’s make it happen.