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1. Growing Together -- The New England Environmental Finance Center recently announced the release of a 27-page guide to accompany its popular video entitled Growing Together: Consensus Building, Smart Growth, and Community Change. The video offers an alternative to the discord and stalemate that too often occurs over how to approach change as a community -"consensus building." Speaking in their own words, community officials, concerned citizens, and developers of smart growth and revitalization projects discuss how difficult issues can be approached collaboratively to find successful paths for change, using principles discussed by consensus-building experts. Included is a written guide to using the film to spur community discussion about how to approach growth challenges.
2. How Healthy are Connecticut's Forests? -- UConn's Center for Land Use Education and Research(CLEAR)recently released an analysis of forest fragmentation in our state. Forest fragmentation-the breaking up of large forested blocks into smaller and smaller pieces-is considered by forestry, wildlife, water and social experts alike to have serious implications for the condition of our natural resources, character of our communities and health of our citizens. During the 1985 - 2006 period, Connecticut lost about 264 square miles of core forest, while gaining area in the categories of forest influenced by development. This core forest represents only about 46% of the total forest cover. "The increasing fragmentation of our forested landscapes sheds more light on the natural resource side of the smart growth/sprawl debate," CLEAR Associate Director Chet Arnold points out. If you are interested in looking how your town or watershed forest stacks up, visit the forest fragmentation website.
3. Did Smart Growth Initiatives in Maryland Work? -- A little over ten years ago, Maryland burst onto the Smart Growth scene when its general assembly passed a package of bills called the Smart Growth and Neighborhood Conservation Initiative. Almost immediately, the stategained national recognition and earned several awards.1 By creating a system for concentrating state spending in urban areas as well as using other economic incentives to contain urban growth, it seemed the state had found a way to promote smarter growth without usurping local land use control. However, a new study says the law has been a bust, largely because it has no teeth to force local governments to comply and because builders have little incentive to redevelop older urban neighborhoods. The study shows that voluntary incentives alone are not enough to curb sprawl and direct growth. Simply put, we cannot sit idly and expect smart growth just to happen.
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