Housing

After World War II, and in the past couple of decades, particularly, Acton has undergone a shift to being a bedroom community for more-or-less affluent people seeking excellent schools, single-family housing (and increasingly, luxury housing), car access for jobs in the greater Boston area, and a materially wealthy lifestyle. (Of course, not everyone who has… Continue reading →

Open Space

If a map of Acton eliminated all the buildings and roads and other human structures on the surface, what would be left is what is called “Open Space”: woods, meadows, marshes, streams, ponds, and rivers.

Trees

From the air, Acton appears to be a continuous forest of trees, interrupted from time to time by smaller features such as meadows, rivers, roads, and buildings.

Zoning

Acton’s zoning bylaw divides the town into multiple areas in which different uses of the land are allowed, limited, or prohibited. In one sense, zoning is a map of a desired future, and can lead us to consider: what would be the best ways to choose and arrange what happens in town?

Projects

Individual development projects, proposed by the Town or by developers, are the circumstances in which sustainability priorities can run most strongly counter to the pressures of the profit motive or notions that more growth is helpful to Acton.

Regional Food and Agriculture

Attention to our local and regional “foodsheds” has never been more widespread or more important, given impacts of climate disruption, loss of farmland to development, pollution of aquifers, degradation of soils from decades of chemical farming, and increasing periods of drought experienced by areas of the country we once regarded as our national and endlessly productive larders. Massachusetts… Continue reading →