For years, the heart of Watertown, well located between Boston and its western suburbs, has been blighted by cut-through traffic. Its response in the 20th Century was to welcome that traffic by widening its roads, such that almost every approach to Watertown Square is now 5 lanes of asphalt. Residents have come to learn that they will always face congestion at rush hour, but that they can decide how many lanes of it they want.

This discussion has been prompted in part by the MBTA Communities Act, which rewards communities for upzoning properties in proximity to transit hubs like Watertown Square. It became clear that a comprehensive downtown plan—one that integrated a framework for smart growth into a street network reconfiguration—was the best path to transforming the Square back into the walkable commercial center that it once was.

Speck Dempsey teamed up with Utile and Stantec Urban Places to create that plan, dieting and reorganizing the streets, adding curb parking and bike lanes, proposing the shape of new development, and creating a form-based code to welcome more than 3000 new housing units into downtown. Presented with three different street networks and three different density outcomes, an active and vocal population came together to embrace a single solution that Council could support and adopt in short order.