There are many juicy morsels in Somerville's SomerVision (first of all, love the name). The final version of the 20-year master plan, three years in the making was released yesterday. Shall we get right to the housing and transportation numbers? 'Cause this is what it's all about:
· The plan says small apartment buildings dominate the city's housing stock. Of those buildings, 34 percent are only two units; another 29 percent are three or four units; and 25 percent are five units or more, with just 12 percent having more than 20.
· Sixty-two percent of the city's housing stock is pre-World War II.
· Ninety-five percent of it is within a five-minute walk to commercial hubs.
· Nearly one-third of Somerville residents use mass transit, making the Green Line extension all the more pivotal.
· In fact, SomerVision was created in large part to imagine all the development along hoped-for T stops. The city wants as much as 85 percent of new development to be along the proposed stops. (We told you transit-oriented development was all the rage.)
· The city wants to develop 6,000 new housing units (1,200 permanently affordable).
· It also wants to create 125 acres of new open space.
Read the entire 183-page master plan here (PDF). Then close your eyes and just SomerVision what could be.
· SomerVision: Comp Plan 2010 - 2030 [City of Somerville]
· Somerville's Downward-Facing Doghouse and Hub's Apt. Future [Curbed Boston]