Information about the process and the progress of the Fort Atkinson master plan can be found at http://www.vandewalle.com/work/fortatkinson.html. Consultants from Vandewalle and the master plan committee welcome citizen input.
Please post your thoughts about the master plan, your vision for the city, your concerns here.
This can be a forum for citizens to air their views.
Did you attend either of the public meetings?
Any comments, suggestions? - bc
3 comments:
bc, you want blog? here's blog:
I'm told we have no sprawl here in Fort Atkinson. We kept out a Wal-Mart, afterall, and sensibly delayed developing beyond the Hwy 26 by-pass until infill development had occurred (if for no other reason than to forestall having to extend city water and sewer that far with its million$ tab). I'm told that everything that has been built in the last few years has been done in the designated areas, and to the zoning, engineering and aesthetic codes and specs we've thoughtfully penned out in our various plans.
All I can say to that, then, is: Good God we're lost. Is this really the best planning can do for us in the beginning of the 21st century in midAmerica? Look, for example, at what has become of the once productive and pastoral Northwest quadrant -- tacky strip malls filled with vapid vendors selling useless, redundant, or socially-predatory products and services to auto-beholden clientele. You've got your deserted box grocery with its parched expanse of kill-all asphalt; then there is the requisite half dozen chain fast food restaurants (some cunningly attached right to gas stations) each vying to layer the fat on our teens who used to be seen sallying from their plentiful parking spaces to the front door of the Waupun-styled high school before being lost to view behind the strangely-sited ersatz "fort-themed" restaurant. There is the duplicate grocery store complex with its parking lot ready for Day-after-Christmas crowds 365 days a year; who can forget the new subdivisions -- look-alike vinyl clad garages with homes tacked behind lining either side of a road wide enough to handle several quarry trucks abreast? And the Days Inn, that delight to the senses, there at the end of the world's longest winding parking lot entrance. Thank goodness the view to all this asphalt is no longer obstructed by those oak trees that once stood there. Thank goodness fertile ag land in areas with plentiful rain fall is so common as to be treated like any other endless commodity. With good planning like this, who needs. . .?
My eyes, heart, stomach, brain say that we are developing poorly, despite our best efforts. Unfortunately, what is good for the developer (and currently legal) is often nonetheless detrimental to a city and its citizens. Poll after poll of the American people (including those done in Jefferson COunty)shows that they wish to preserve family farms and wild areas; that increased traffic and sprawl is undesireable; and that those of us who choose to live in small towns choose them precisely because they are small. Study after study done by farm preservationists and economists stress the importance of vast tracts of uninterrupted farmland. . . Yet, town and city after village, succumbs to this fringe development of identity-denying, agricultural economy-gutting, trashy mcgreasy growth plan because we don't yet have the tools to stop it.
We need tools like Europeans have tools. We need cities themselves to be able to develop housing projects to the standards that people already living in the city would desire. We need moratoriums placed on highly pressured growth areas, in order that we can draw the lens back and be sure that if we are going to sacrifice some of the primest ag land IN THE WORLD, it ought to be for the best of reasons instead of the most insipid, as is today's custom. We need PDR, TDR and other programs that could be funded by city-owned energy-generators (such as solar arrays and wind turbines). After the initial cost is paid, what would've been paid to the energy companies could be put into an account for purchasing land or development rights to protect or hold for truly city-sanctioned projects.
How about parking lot sharing agreements -- where businesses that primarily draw night crowds are sited next to day-drawing businesses, in order to have parking lots pull double duty and therefore be half the size? And the parking lots need to be paver lots from here on in.
Let's insist on green building -- LEED standards or their equivalents -- put on southfacing lots --and build holistically -- with the waste heat from one building being used to heat another; stormwater and grey water being regenerated on-site, buildings built out of salvaged or local materials, and/or put together with screws, not nails, so that they can be taken down when their useful life ends.
Let's welcome newcomers to our bright city by accepting higher density in our already built areas: take down or renovate the abandoned retail outlets and factories and replace them with liveable and affordable condos or multi-unit dwellings. Loosen zoning to allow for granny additions, and encourage house-sharing. Let's build upwards before outwards. There is nothing exclusive about wanting to protect land for agriculture and wildlife. Let's add a story to every building we build from here on out, in order to include nice apartments for newcomers; let's also put a cap or luxury tax rate on private residences built upwards of 2800 square feet unless it can be shown that more than 6 people will be living there. Let's put green roofs on what is feasible, and solar panels on everything else.
Can we put solar panels where all billboards now are?
Until we have rational and sane controls on growth, I say we do the truly conservative thing, and design a master plan that makes each developer prove to a majority of city dwellers that the sacrifice of our rich and proven agriculture-based economy and culture will be compensated for by the features of his/her development. Unless the majority are convinced, the speculator's gamble doesn't pay off.
My vote for a master plan is to have it stress the time element and join the slow growth movement. Let's be a model of restraint and fiscal responsibility by insisting our master plan restrict greenfield growth. Fort can and must do it.
Just read where Monroe County, Michigan, adopted a farmland preservation ordinance that will make the county eligible for state Agricultural Preservation Fund grants. See more at www.smartgrowth.org/news.
Let's encourage our county to do an exploratory of that ordinance and see if it can be replicated here. How about we do this yesterday?
The Town of Dunn, just a few miles west of here, has one of the model preservation land use policies in the country. They face as much development pressure as we do, and even more (Madison being just a stone's throw to the north) but they have enacted, enforced, and kept funded incredible conservation land use policies. This is a Wisconsin municipal model we can learn from. What could be more relevant?
Post a Comment