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| Correction ran 11/17/2000: A story published Wednesday should have said that a former finance director for the town of Littleton, N.H., was convicted of embezzlement in 1997. It was not the former town manager. |
LITTLETON, N.H.
Here in the isolated and sparsely populated North Country, sprawl is less of a public nuisance than moose crossing the road.
Yet some of the most avant-garde ''smart growth'' tactics that sprawling urban centers are just beginning to consider have been a way of life in rural Littleton, population 5,965, for more than two years.
This picturesque town in the White Mountains has embraced innovative, sometimes drastic, planning concepts: Fill every existing building before putting up new ones and invite citizens to participate in planning decisions through town hall-style meetings.
Urban experts say Littleton could serve as a model for big cities that are grappling with growth, dying downtowns and deteriorating neighborhoods.
The town and school district spent $200,000 out of their combined $12 million annual budget to hire Concordia Inc., a community planning firm. Architects and planning experts set up task forces and partnerships to connect all corners of the community and allow ideas and solutions to bubble up.
The town and school boards realized that their futures are intertwined: Without more resources in the schools, Littleton could not develop a strong labor force and attract investments. Young people are leaving and one out of five residents is over 60.
''When we think about what happens in a city, we still think with the mindset that it has to be top down,'' says Steven Bingler, president of Concordia. ''But it's all about human beings and how they socialize. It's the common way of how we all deal with each other.''
For 16 months, the 100 members of Envisioning Littleton's Future gathered every month for three hours in a school gymnasium. They're homemakers, students, ministers, lawyers, teachers and shop owners. They range in age from 12 to 80. Their first mission: Find ways to improve cramped and aging schools. Should all the schools be moved to one mega-campus on the edge of town? Should some be renovated and others abandoned? Should they all be combined? And if new schools are built, how could the town use the old schools?
No idea is too outlandish and no voice too small.
When 12-year-old Whitney Jewett balks at the long walk she would face if a new middle school was built on the other side of town, 72-year-old Julia Fogg shows little sympathy: ''You won't need exercise classes this way.''
The meetings are lively but civil. There are arguments but also laughter. The residents pore over blueprints.
They don't just talk about the schools. They debate the effect that their ideas will have on traffic, recreation facilities and the overall character of the town.
This approach is a 21st-century planner's dream. It incorporates all the principles of the much-touted ''new urbanism:'' Create neighborhoods that encourage personal contact and discourage driving by keeping homes, businesses and public institutions in close proximity.
The process forced town and school officials to set aside their old rivalries. They meet regularly and integrate their budgets, unheard of in many communities.
After 50 hours of brainstorming, Littleton citizens reach a consensus. Forget about a big school campus. Renovate the old high school at the top of a steep street in the center of town. Expand the newer elementary school but redesign the driveway to pull it away from a busy road. Build a new middle school nearby.
The recommendations were presented to the school board Tuesday evening. They stand a good chance of passing because officials are less likely to nix projects that have broad support, Bingler says.
''We could say no but we won't want to say no,'' says Robert Horan, superintendent of schools.
Voters in Saline, Mich., recently approved a $124 million school bond issue after about 175 citizens went through a similar process with the help of Concordia.
It was the first successful bond issue in six years and the largest in county history. Pasadena, Calif., just hired Concordia to help its schools.
The concept of citizen-based planning, popular in Portland, Ore., for almost 30 years, is taking off in a number of cities, some as big as Rochester, N.Y.; Chattanooga, Tenn.; and Boston.
''It's a long time coming,'' says Bruce Katz, director of the Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy at the Brookings Institution. The Littleton blueprint can work in big cities at the neighborhood level, he says.
Rochester turned city planning on its head when it divided neighborhoods into task forces and asked citizens to come up with recommendations. It got 895 suggestions and managed to work them into the city's master plan.
Littleton doesn't have most of the ills of sprawling cities: No substantial population growth, no surge in school enrollment, no dying downtown and no dramatic economic boom or bust.
Housing is affordable, crime is rare, unemployment is low, Main Street is thriving, the air is pristine and the schools have a good academic record.
And the steep hills and river that surround the town help contain sprawl.
What trouble Littleton had was government corruption. The town manager was convicted of embezzlement in 1997. The town hired Don Jutton, head of Municipal Resources Inc., a consulting firm that specializes in straightening out towns' finances. Jutton, intent on boosting economic development, met with local groups. Then he visited the schools. He was shocked.
''They were old and tired,'' Jutton says -- a bad incentive for companies to relocate here. ''I thought there is no way we could invite a company president and convince him to come to this community without taking him through the schools.''
Jutton also got NASA to pick Littleton for its school partnership program. The school district is one of a handful to benefit from NASA's advanced science and math curriculum -- an important asset now that this old shoe-factory town is trying to recruit telecommunications companies.
The NASA partnership led Jutton to the folks at Concordia and townspeople caught smart-growth fever.
One recent afternoon, citizens gathered in the old Opera House to hear one of the nation's leading experts on ''walkable communities.'' He told them how to design streets and neighborhoods that will entice people to walk. He critiqued Littleton's traffic (take out traffic lights, put in traffic circles) and its Main Street storefronts (better lighting).
Main Street merchants also meet regularly to discuss strategies. Thanks to the Main Street program, historic facades are freshly painted and decorated with flower boxes. Downtown has the feel of a nice college town without the college. There are gift shops, a vintage clothing store, coffeehouses and bookstore.
When Wal-Mart came to town, Main Street businesses were not worried. They focused on goods and services that big-box retailers can't offer and benefited from the flow of shoppers coming across the Connecticut River from Vermont. They come for Wal-Mart and New Hampshire's lack of a sales tax.
Michael and Carol Hamilton opened Chutter General Store on Main Street in 1997. ''People were asking 'Where can I get a present for my wife and get it wrapped?' '' Carol says.
The gift and candy store that holds the Guinness World Record for the longest candy counter is so busy that it stopped taking orders online.
Littleton's Main Street program forged enough public and private partnerships to lure 32 businesses and restore an 18th-century grist mill and riverfront buildings.
Plans are in the works for a $4 million affordable-housing development and a pedestrian and recreation trail on both sides of the Ammonoosuc River that flows through town.
Littleton was named New Hampshire's Main Street Community of the Year in 1999.
To Littleton residents, working together seems less visionary than just plain common sense. After all, the town hall meeting is a New England tradition and New Hampshirites are famously pragmatic.
''As the noted philosopher Mick Jagger once said, you can't always get what you want but if you try, you get what you need,'' says Brien Ward, a local lawyer and state representative.