Case studies on Route 1 : how the perceived identity of local commercial strips affects zoning

Abstract

Designers, planners, and new urbanists have often argued that highway strips, replete with big box retail and countless strip malls, are essentially placeless. It has also been argued that generic local zoning is largely to blame for existence and persistence of strips. While there may be some truth to these claims, every strip exists within a city, or town, or municipality, and has a unique relationship with that place. This thesis explores Route 1 through Dedham, Saugus and Peabody, MA to highlight that far from being interchangeable landscapes, the Route 1 strip varies from town to town, bearing distinctive marks of each town's approach to controlling it. These cases illustrate that a key variable in how heavily towns will rely on zoning to shape and control strip development is whether or not they view their strip as part of the town rather than as an outside entity. This thesis argues that, while it is true that variation between strip landscapes stems from zoning, the strip formula is not that simple: the way in which the towns write and implement their code derives from the perceived identity of each Route 1 strip, ultimately affecting the appearance of that strip.