Regional Growth Management
The 2020 Vision Plan
In early
1999, NMCOG invited members of the Northern Middlesex community – a diverse group of
town and city officials, residents, business people, institutional, and nonprofit
organization representatives – to participate in a two-stage "charrette" or
planning workshop in order to develop a strategy and plan for managing regional growth
during the next twenty years. The 2020 Vision Plan that resulted from the charrette
has been accepted by the Council as a regional planning guidance document.
NMCOG plans to issue an Annual Indicators Report to measure our progress towards the 2020
Vision.
Download the complete report
What is growth management?
Growth management is a public policy approach to community and economic development that guides development to appropriate locations while preserving other areas from destructive or excessive development. Growth management is neither pro-growth nor anti-growth. It requires answering three interrelated questions about any particular planning area:
Why regional growth management?
In
Massachusetts, municipal governments have primary responsibility for regulating land use
under authority granted by state legislation. Communities can guide their development
based on their intimate knowledge of local needs and conditions. At the same time, there
are many pressures on local communities that are regional in character or have regional
impacts. Transportation investment decisions affect the location of new development and
levels of traffic congestion. The loss of open space destroys the habitat networks that
wildlife need to survive. Decisions that may seem purely local, such as zoning patterns,
can in fact have impacts far beyond local borders. We need to find the proper balance
between the local and regional perspectives in order to enhance the quality of life of
everyone in Northern Middlesex. Both locally and on the regional level, thoughtful growth
management can successfully integrate economic development with the preservation of
environmental resources and community character.
2020 Vision:
Planning for Growth in the Northern Middlesex Region
Over the past fifty
years, our region has been transformed from an industrial city surrounded by predominantly
rural towns to a predominantly suburban environment surrounding a historic urban core. Too
much of our landscape has been transformed by "sprawl" – decentralized,
low-density settlement patterns that require driving for almost all activities, expensive
extension of infrastructure and services, break up ecological integrity, damage historic
character, and promote the social and economic isolation of urban centers. Most residents
of our region work in suburban employment centers rather than cities. We continue to
develop land and create housing units at a faster rate than our population is growing. The
amount of land used for agriculture in our region has declined precipitously since 1950.
As our region becomes more uniformly developed, we need to decide what kind of place we want to become. Are there threatened resources that we must act to preserve? Can we sustain our quality of life and accommodate growth? Can we revitalize older buildings and neighborhoods? How can we assure that all our citizens participate in both the preservation of quality of life and new economic opportunities?
The 2020 Vision Charrette
Over fifty representatives from every municipality and a variety of regional organizations attended the 2020 Vision Charrette. At the first session, participants discussed strengths and weaknesses, current issues, and future possibilities in five thematic areas:
- Economic Development
- Environmental Protection and Open Space
- Infrastructure
- Housing and Residential Development
- Community Character: History Culture, and Landscape
Base on the results of this session, NMCOG staff developed a vision statement, a questionnaire on priority issues, and a preliminary action agenda for discussion during the second charrette session. At that gathering, participants exchanged views from the very perspectives of urban, suburban, and rural communities.
The 2020 Vision
Charrette participants’ vision for our region in the 20 years is one of diversity, environmental and economic balance, and greater regional cooperation:
- The region will retain a balance of urban, suburban and rural areas, each with its own character based in history, environment, and current uses.
- New economic development projects will be focused in areas already served by infrastructure.
- New residential development will be moderate and sited to preserve open space through clustering and other techniques.
- Mixed-use development will lessen the need for multiple vehicle trips to accomplish daily task and thereby improve traffic conditions.
- The region will have an interconnected open space network linked by waterways and regional pedestrian and bike routes.
- Improved management and maintenance of land and water resources will preserve wildlife habitat, water quality and quantity, and enhance quality of life.
The Plan
The 2020
Vision Plan is both ambitious and pragmatic. There are no easy tasks in truly regional
growth management, and there are often difficult choices and trade-offs to be made. The
easier tasks, such as open space and historic preservation, are based on a theoretical
consensus, but even then, specific situations can be highly controversial. These are the
regional growth management challenges and tasks that emerged from the charrette
discussions:
The Hard Tasks
- Preserve open space and develop an interconnected regional open space network
- Preserve historic resource
The Harder Tasks
- Implement a review system for developments of regional importance
- Revitalize town, village, and downtown commercial centers
- Direct economic development to underutilized urban an village sites
- Develop compact mixed-0use business and commercial centers
- Improve design standards and developer incentives for open space residential subdivision design
The Hardest Tasks
- Decrease auto dependence
- Increase the use (not simply the availability ) of public transportation
- Decrease traffic congestion
- Promote compact, mixed-use centers that include residences
- Promote a more equitable distribution of affordable housing in the region
The potential projects that received the most widespread support form charrette participants included development of a regional open space plan, dissemination of model zoning bylaws on cluster development and mixed-use development, transportation planning for mixed-use centers, dissemination of design guidelines for town centers, and creation of an alliance of local land trusts.
Next Steps
The 2020 Vision Plan will be NMCOG’s baseline plan for many years to come. NMCOG will use this plan to measure progress towards the 2020 Vision. NMCOG will encourage municipalities to sign memoranda of agreement on a handful of issues with broadest appeal and NMCOG will use this plan in developing new programs to assist member communities in coping with growth management dilemmas.