Mission: The Green Acton Land Use Committee (LUC) researches, comments, and educates, from an ecological perspective, on matters of Acton’s land use. We prepare statements and proposals to inform Acton residents about threats to sustainability, and to urge town government and other local entities to take what are sometimes bold or inconvenient steps to address… Continue reading →
Land Use
How is Acton’s land used? How can it best be used to support long-term, sustainability? And how do we get from here to there? Land use is a large and complex topic. You can learn more from these pages:
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?
May 2018 Green Acton Statement on Kelley’s Corner Infrastructure Project
Public Statement about Kelley’s Corner Infrastructure Project Approved by Green Acton Directors 2018-05-18 Sent to Metropolitan Planning Organization and the Kelley’s Corner Steering Committee
Green Acton position on Article 28
Green Acton agreed, at its March 2018 meeting, to support Article 28 on the Spring Town Meeting Warrant.
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 →