Proper Planning Is Making Some Progress Against All The Pushback

Recently with all the discussions about the Zoning Act reforms, the entire discussion of whether planning is improving, and lasting reforms are being made. The Mass Audubon Society has released its latest report on land use which you can find here: Mass Audubon report.

The report illustrates that gains are being made to protect the state's critical resources. Even the Boston Globe has published a positive review of this report, Boston.com story, on the report. Given all the rhetoric recently, much of it covered far more extensively than the state's need to protect its resources, about how the state is not meeting its housing growth needs, it was actually a breathe of fresh air to see the Globe not make negative comments about how protecting open space will hurt the state's housing market.

Before the naysayers jump onto this report, or at least use the findings to attack communities on housing policy, it is important to look at this shift towards increased land protection as having occurred while the state housing supply has grown by 0.55%, a rate faster than its population growth, and added twice the number of housing units of any other New England state.

As a planner, I applaud my fellow planners for realizing that housing and open space preservation do work together, and, in spite of the ideas being espoused at the state level, planning and zoning in the state is not broken.