Neighborhood Design Center, Inc.

The City of Fitchburg commissioned the Neighborhood Design Center to facilitate a neighborhood modeling workshop for the North McGaw Neighborhood. The neighborhood modeling workshop provides design guidance to the neighborhood planning process. The North McGaw neighborhood plan will determine, what if any, areas within the identified Neighborhood are suitable for urban expansion. The area of the planned neighborhood is immediately south of the City’s Urban Service Area boundary.

The workshop held on May 22, 2008 included a site assessment mapping exercise, a neighborhood design presentation, and a ModelBlock exercise. The final report of the workshop is available here.

Site Assessment Exercise
The purpose of the site assessment exercise was to identify the features and characteristics of the N. McGaw Neighborhood site that will affect the development of the neighborhood. Workshop participants divided into two groups to identify, by marking on an aerial photograph of the North McGaw Neighborhood, the following:

• neighborhood context;

• neighborhood assets and issues;

• existing and planned infrastructure; and

• possible phasing of development.

Model Block Exercise

During the ModelBlock exercise, participants arranged wooden blocks representing a variety of building types on an aerial photograph to create neighborhood developments for two selected portions of the North McGaw Neighborhood. The objective of the exercise was to create a hypothetical neighborhood development with the characteristics below, that represent City of Fitchburg land use goals:

• Target density: 7 dwelling units per residential acre.

• Mix of development types: commercial (employment, retail, service), residential, park and open space, civic.

• Mix of housing types: large single family, small single family, town house, apartment.

• Interconnected street network

• Walkable destinations - try to locate destinations within quarter to half mile walking distance

For an 80 acre site to at the northeastern corner of the neighborhood, participants developed a model

that included the following features:

• Mixed use neighborhood center along a planned arterial road, and within walking distance of a planned commuter rail station just to the north of the site. The neighborhood center includes a prominent civic use that terminates the view of a neighborhood street.

• Bicycle path along the edge of the site that connects to regional bicycle trail networks. A pedestrian-bicycle overpass crosses the rail line.

• Open space network including a stormwater corridor through the middle of the site, neighborhood parks, at major intersections, and natural area buffers along the stream and buffering noise from U.S. Highway 14.

• Density gradient with most dense housing at the mixed-use neighborhood center, and decreasing density with distance from the center.

• Interconnected network of streets and paths. Blocks sizes range from about 600 feet long, about 480 feet, and about 320 feet. The depth of the blocks are about 240 feet. The blocks show houses facing the street and garages in back accessed by alleys.

Site Model Data
Information recorded from the model site yielded the following site data:

Land Use Acres Percent Units Units/Acre
Residential 54.4 44% 763 14.0
Mixed Use 23.1 19%
Open Space 45.2 37%
Total 122.7 100%

Mix of uses on the site:
Small lot single-family residential Civic Use
Large lot single-family residential Employment
Multi-family residential Park
Commercial Natural Area

Walkability
Total units within ¼ mile of:

Neighborhood Center 90%
Civic use 1-Neighborhood Center 100%
Civic use 2-Neighborhood Park (center) 100%
Neighborhood Park 100%