Article 10 for Fall Town Meeting

Article 10 would lower the amount of off-street parking required for multi-family residential development.  Below is some general background information on the Article, and you can follow the link below to download the full text and explanation.  Please feel free to write to me with any questions or comments.  I will be using this blog to post information and updates about the article as we approach Town Meeting, which begins Tuesday, November 16.

Passage of any zoning change requires a 2/3 majority vote in Town Meeting, which is a difficult threshold to meet. Therefore, it is important for anyone in favor of this measure to call or write your Town Meeting representatives.  Download a full listing of Town Meeting Member's contact information by clicking Town Meeting Members A-Z on the right. You can determine your Precinct here, if you don't know it by typing in your address.

It is also very important that supporters voice their support in person at the various review meetings that occur prior to Town Meeting.  This is the public's chance to express their thoughts.  Direct input from the public is very influential to those Committee members considering Town policy.  Please show your support for lower parking requirements by attending these upcoming meetings.

Upcoming meetings:

Zoning By-Law Committee
Monday, September 27, 2010
6:30 pm  Room 103  Brookline Town Hall

Notes:  The meeting begins at 6:30, but there are four other articles that will be discussed prior to Article 10, interested parties should arrive by 7:30, although it is possible the order may be changed.

Planning Board
Thursday, September 30, 2010
7:30 pm 6th Floor Selectman's Hearing Room Brookline Town Hall
Send Comments to Polly Selkoe.  Make sure you put Article 10 Comments for Planning Board in Subject line and ask her to distribute your comments.
Notes: The meeting begins at 7:30, but there are four other articles that will be presented prior to Article 10, interested parties should arrive by 8:30.

Advisory Committee/ Planning and Regulatory Sub-Committee
Monday, October 4, 2010
7:30 pm  Rm 103 Brookline Town Hall
Send Comments to Neil Wishinsky. Make sure you put Article 10 Comments in your Subject Line and ask him to distribute your comments to the Committee.

I'm proposing Article 10 for Fall Town Meeting.  My proposal would lower the off-street parking requirements for multi-family residential parking. Right now, Brookline's Zoning By-law requires 2 or 2.3 parking spaces for every multi-family dwelling unit built, even studio and one-bedroom units near transit. Each parking space requires 330 sq. ft. of space, so in the case of small units, the amount of space devoted to parking is close to the size of the unit!

My proposal would lower the minimum parking required to between 0.8 to 1.4 spaces per unit, depending on the size of the unit.  These rates are very similar to the parking requirements in Brookline's By-law from 1962 to 1986, namely 0.8 to 1.3. Prior to 1962, the only parking requirement was the one space per multi-family unit that has been required since 1922.

It was only recently that two substantial increases, one in 1987 and then another in 2000 brought our requirements to their current peak of 2 and 2.3 spaces per unit.  The new proposed rates have been crafted to reflect Brookline-specific auto-ownership and travel behavior for each dwelling unit type.

A full text of the Article and a detailed explanation (two separate files) can be downloaded from the Town of Brookline website here:

Town Meeting Warrant Articles and Explanations

Our existing requirements exceed those common in suburban locations, where the only way to get anywhere is to drive a car. Brookline is not like this, which is one of the reasons so many of us find it such a desirable place to live. We have options. We can walk or bike to our neighborhood stores, schools and parks and we can take public transit to employment, culture and recreation.

Our history as a streetcar suburb created the land use pattern we find so pleasingly human scaled.  Blocks are small, houses are close together, concentrated pedestrian commercial areas surrounded by leafy neighborhoods. Denser housing nearest the T lines. It all happened before the automobile became ubiquitous.  An auto-oriented development pattern would look quite different.  This is for one simple fact: automobiles take up a great deal of space.  They spend 95% of their time parked and for each car there exists approximately 4 parking spaces.

The negatives of requiring too much parking have become apparent, we:

1) Lose more of our limited green and open space to pavement for excess parking we don't need.

2) Threaten Historic Structures.  Re-use or expansion of existing buildings becomes impossible with the high parking requirements, thereby incentivizing the tearing down of historic buildings.

3) Degrade building design. First floors become parking. Facades become garage fronts and side yards are driveways.  Buildings become taller and bigger to recoup the cost of the parking and to accommodate the sq. footage desired on the same lot.

4) Decrease Housing Diversity.  The extra costs of the parking are added onto the cost of housing, smaller units are not built and the continuing maintenance costs are born by residents.  Occupants are not given the opportunity to save household transportation expenditures from opting out of purchasing excess parking.

5) Incentivize Auto Use and Degrade Pedestrian Environment.  Mandating excess parking encourages excess auto ownership, shifting individuals away from other modes.  More autos, driveways, curb cuts and garages makes it harder  and less pleasant to walk.

Sustainable Brookline Conference

Last Sunday a gathering was held at Wheelock College, called Sustainable Brookline. Coordinated by many individuals, most notably the ad hoc Steering Committee for a Sustainable Brookline, its stated mission was to "develop a coordinated strategy for making Brookline a truly sustainable community". Over 60 members of our community gave up their Sunday afternoon to meet, discuss and plan future coordinated actions. Don Weitzman of the Climate Change Action Committee ran the meeting with supreme efficiency, ensuring that everyone present was able to participate and the ideas continued to flow.

Many groups and individuals were represented. Each presented up to three "actions" that would bring Brookline closer to sustainability. Many, many good ideas came forward, some were clearly predictable, doable and valuable such as expanding recycling programs to businesses, others were more innovative and perhaps challenging to implement, such as the Conservation Commission's Green Streets program that seeks to manage storm water flows with vegetation. Building, energy and vehicle efficiencies were all pinpointed by numerous groups. Many spoke of the need to promote alternative transportation including bikes, transit and walking while reducing auto-dependence. Hugh Mattison spoke of the need to interest young people in street tree stewardship through a tree buddy program. The GreenSpace Alliance stressed the education of youth too in it's presentation, clearly thought was given to the need look ahead.

Our actions are intermeshed and carry rippling repercussions. Some of these connections were identified at the conference. Transportation Board policies impact the Bicycle Advisory Committee's planned bike routes. Implementing green building standards will redirect a building contractor's business. As my previous post outlines, our zoning ordinances' requirement for excessive parking has far reaching impacts on the livability of our community. Future discussions will hopefully bring into focus the benefits of promoting localized economies, food production and social structures.

And yet, the purpose of the gathering was no doubt in response to the growing awareness of the need for action to prepare for the changes that will undoubtedly come our way. Sitting in a room full of "environmentalists", (an antiquated term I feel because it now has a history of adversarial politics and "holier than thou" attitudes that have not been particularly constructive), took me back to the original Earth Day, I vividly recall participating in it. I was in grade school, I pinned a "Give Earth a Chance" button on my shirt and we cleaned up our play yard! It seems almost ridiculous that a species living on the planet had to have an Earth Day at all, but there it is, I guess we did. The river just down the street from my school churned and foamed a putrid green with the effluent from the paper mill just upstream. It eventually got cleaned up. I am sure everyone around me had similar memories. I recall too, learning in college courses about the true impacts of our industries and way of life. We studied natural resource economics, world food systems, community environmental field studies and resource dispute resolution, all trying to bring reason and humanity back to the center of things.

In truth we are all in this together, going along for the ride. We are all both part of the problem and potentially part of the solution. It was inspiring to see so many dedicated individuals who were truly trying to put forward positive solutions. I salute each and every one of you.

Perhaps future generations will read over the minutes of our meeting and think, "thank goodness they finally started to get their act together and tried to do something." Or perhaps they will say, "it was too late and they just didn't know it, and the things they talked about didn't make any difference anyway". There were those voices at the conference who urged a more drastic reaction and response. (Like what?, they didn't say.) Fear and panic do not seem very useful. While others spoke of the need to process and adjust. So in the end, I believe it was the middle road that was taken. A call for action within the state of things as we know them, never losing sight of the need to continually push ourselves for further progress.

While I do not have faith in technological solutions alone, as some do, I believe in our ability to adapt, change, evolve, and innovate. Solutions will be combinations of things more intertwined and complex than we can imagine, an infinitely dispersed network of problem solvers will come up with a great many things. So I guess I am a glass half full person. I thank the ad hoc committee for organizing the conference and look forward to seeing the progress we make working together towards a sustainable Brookline.

[where:02446]

If We Build it They Will Drive

While there is no shortage of opinions in this town, one thing we pretty much all agree on is our affection for it. We might differ on a few particulars, but the list of things we all rattle off about what we love about Brookline usually sounds remarkably similar.

It is somewhat disheartening then to see the escalating divisiveness and animosity around issues of planning and development. This is not surprising and our community is certainly not alone in finding ourselves mired in controversy. These are big questions with huge impacts, and depending on where you live and how you are impacted it can feel as if the livability of your neighborhood or the financial future of your family depend on the outcome. There are of course laws, procedures and techniques all designed to take into account everyone’s concerns and lead us to just and equitable solutions. I honestly believe we could all come to a remarkable degree of consensus if we could just ratchet down the rhetoric, evaluate some alternatives objectively and think in terms of the overall good of the town and it’s long term future. It’s just not easy.

With our unique governmental structure we do not have a big bureaucracy to do the job for us. All of you who serve on town boards, attend meetings, voice opinions, volunteering your time, you are our bureaucracy. We need a lot more of you. We need new voices. We each bear a unique burden of citizenship that we have inherited by becoming members here. As citizens we need to adopt policies that reflect our collective goals for the future.

There is one set of policies in particular that is resulting in unintended negative consequences to our town and its future. I believe if these negatives were fully revealed, the majority of Brookline residents would not support the policies. I am referring to the amount of parking that must be provided for new and redeveloped housing and businesses. The required rates are set way too high. Now I know parking is one hot issue in this town, but bear with me here.

Let’s talk about the businesses first. Our code requires 1 parking space for every 200 – 350 sq. ft of retail space. This creates a level of parking adequate to service a store out in a field somewhere in the boonies where all the customers are going to drive to that store and the store is the sole destination of that trip. We all know this is not the case in Coolidge Corner or anywhere along Beacon St. Now our code does allow for some reduction for transit accessibility, but not enough. A more transit friendly rate would be 1 space per 1,000 sq. ft. Requiring on-site parking for each building makes compact development impossible, such as the type of building we enjoy in Coolidge Corner now.

Now let’s talk about housing. The parking requirements per housing unit were recently (2000) raised from 1.5 – 1.8 per unit to 2 to 2.3 per unit (even for studio or one bedroom units). This, despite the fact that according to the 2000 Census Brookline has the 4th highest rank in the country (43.03%) of non-auto commuters for communities between 50,000 and 250,000. Many people cite Brookline’s T accessible location as their reason for locating here. If we maintain adequate neighborhood services, it is entirely possible to live car free in Brookline as many have chosen to do. There are many individuals who do not or cannot drive or own a car and their numbers will only grow. A recent analysis of auto-ownership near Coolidge Corner reveals that 82% of the households have 1 or 0 autos. We are building more parking than residents need.

Transportation costs are the second largest household expense. One way to reduce that is to live in a mobility enhanced location such as Brookline. Our parking requirements add significant costs to new housing, reduces the possibility for on-site open space, encourages driving, burdens our overcrowded roadways (which, by the way are deteriorating and expensive to maintain), and severely limits our ability to provide a variety of housing types and price points. Young professionals are seeking an alternative to the auto dependent lifestyle, but they won’t find it here if we continue to build for the car rather than the alternative transportation user.

Many think that putting the parking underground takes care of the problem. Out of sight, out of mind. The only benefit to this is not having a surface parking lot. We will still have that many more cars on the road, overwhelming our already congested streets, causing more backups, delays, and road rage. More autos bring many negatives; the pedestrian environment is degraded, it’s harder to cross the street, there is more pollution and noise and conflicts from cars turning into driveways across sidewalks. There will be less space on the roadway for bicycles and more car/bike conflicts. The cumulative effect of these conflicts will discourage walking and biking.

Our excessive parking requirements have far reaching environmental impacts as well. First, they encourage driving. In the age of global warming this is the exact opposite of what we should be doing. Vehicles account for 30% of our nation’s CO2 emissions. We cannot adequately reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by driving hybrid cars. For one thing, as population grows, VMT (vehicle miles traveled) will continue to increase. As gas mileage efficiencies increase, the limiting effects of high gas prices will be mitigated, thus causing drivers to drive more. No, the only way to reduce the CO2 from vehicles is to drive less and the only way to drive less is to build in such a way as to facilitate transit and other alternative transportation modes for a greater portion of our travel needs.

If we want to be consistent with the values of environmental sustainability, preservation of open space, enhancing our pedestrian environment and providing a variety of housing types and values then we need to reduce our parking requirements.

[where:02446]