The Situation
Land conservation strategies are needed to preserve the Vermont landscape we cherish but which is beginning to be altered at an accelerating rate. Recently revealed employment, population, and home construction projections indicate that northwestern Vermont is at the beginning of a period of accelerated land development and loss of open space. Continuation and acceleration of land protection by public parks agencies and private non-profit land trusts is necessary (view Vermont Land Trust website). But they alone can not preserve all the open space that human and wildlife residents need to experience fulfilling lives such as: agricultural land use and pastoral scene bordering our daily travel routes; forested hillsides and ridgelines; riparian habitat and migration routes along streams and rivers; and room for people to roam close to home.
Private land owners and developers, who will be creating thousands of new homes and hundreds of new neighborhoods, are in a position to make a major contribution to permanently preserving these strategically located open spaces.
How? By providing room to roam and natural foreground scenery adjacent to where people will live. By transferring open land to towns for use as public parks, by Transferring Development Rights (TDR) to developers closer to the town center, and lastly by developing in a green fashion that preserves open space for people and wildlife.
When? At the same time as they create new neighborhoods and home sites. Conventional residential subdivisions provide street rights-of-way and roads that connect every house site. Conservation subdivisions provide greenways and trails that provide direct physical and visual access to every home site.
Who benefits?
- Residents of the new neighborhoods who have extensive room to roam and are not bordered on all sides by private property and motor vehicle traffic!
- Land owners and developers who benefit financially from sales to the many (perhaps the majority) of people who are willing to pay as much or more for the way of life that takes advantage of the Vermont landscape.
- Wildlife for which shelter, food and migration routes are preserved.
- The Town which can more economically provide road maintenance, school bus and utility services to the same number of homes over shorter distances.
How do land owners and developers become aware of the benefits of simultaneously creating new home sites, new roads, AND permanently reserved greenways? Land owners who decide to sell or develop their land typically seek advice and assistance from the realtors and engineers who do not typically consider all the opportunities as well as the constraints of the natural environment or other options such as creating a park or TDR. Nor do they typically respond to the full array of underlying life style preferences of all potential buyers and, contrary to the true wishes of a considerable portion of the market, base their designs on what has sold in the past-a past which has not included many conservation subdivision designs. And in some of the few examples, homes that were not sited, oriented and designed to provide as much privacy as possible and did not take full advantage of the setting.
Goodhue Land Design is based in Stowe, VT, is run by Nat Goodhue, and is dedicated to the preservation of Vermont as we know it in the face of population increase and housing development. Read more about Nat Goodhue and his work.
