Damariscotta, Maine is a small New England town nestled along the coast and steeped in history and traditions. Old brick buildings line the main street; an ancient Native American oyster shell midden speaks to a long past of fishing; and in the fall, creatively decorated pumpkins line the streets as part of the annual Great Pumpkin Fest and Regatta.

But Damariscotta is looking to the future, as well, and as part of their planning they are using thoroughly modern tools including CommunityViz.

Recipients of a Heart and Soul Community Planning grant from the Orton Family Foundation, Damariscotta has embarked on a long-term planning process aimed at creating a vision, plans and actions to reinforce the qualities that make Damariscotta a great place to live. You can read more about it on Orton’s site and the project’s site.

A major focus of the project is what Orton calls “Heart and Soul,” or “those tangible and intangible elements that if lost would fundamentally change the character of [a] place.” In Damariscotta, an extensive outreach campaign drew out five broad values that residents share the most:

• living locally
• working locally
• sense of community
• where nature and culture meet
• access to town

If, for example, people here had to commute long distances to work, it just wouldn’t be Damariscotta, they essentially said.

The local consulting firm Spatial Alternatives, with some help from us here at Placeways, worked with the town to build a CommunityViz model that effectively scored plan alternatives on how well they would support each of the five values. Plans that had too little affordable housing, for example, scored poorly on “living locally,” while a dearth of jobs hurt the “working locally” score. The model was more complicated than this simplified description, but that’s the general idea.

Damariscotta Scenario Comparison

One of the best things about the model is that it isn’t a black box. Anyone can see how it’s built, and it’s easy to change. Better yet, the more subjective components are set up with CommunityViz slider bars so they’re easy to adjust during the course of a discussion.

There was a chance to try out the model “on the ground,” so to speak, during a design charrette that was held last month. While town residents met with planners by day and designers sketched ideas by night, CommunityViz was used to illustrate the effects different plans would have on the town’s character in years to come. How did it work? We’re not sure yet. Ask us in years to come!

Posted by Doug on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
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