Dear Cambridge Neighbors – today's Boston Globe highlights a milestone for Burlington, VT

BURLINGTON, Vt. — Vermont's largest city has a new success to add to its list of socially conscious achievements: 100 percent of its electricity now comes from renewable sources such as wind, water, and biomass.” See the link to the article below. It's not that Cambridge can replicate Burlington – we're in a whole different geographic situation, but the article is testimony to what long-term master planning can do to carry a city into a sustainable future.

The second link is to Burlington's Master Plan that has been in place for more than 2 decades. Burlington's vision, powered by then Mayor now Senator Bernie Sanders, demonstrates how a community can grow and prosper with focused, participatory planning. So check out the second link – below it there's a snippet from the current plan that shows how once a citywide plan is in place, there can be a focus on specific neighborhoods. In Cambridge, sadly, we have enormous pressures on a couple of areas in the city so we need to press for an overall plan and concentrate on the immediate plans to inundate the Fresh Pond/Alewife area with high-rent units and allow a private developer to turn the 180-foot Sullivan Courthouse into an inappropriately huge high tech office building in a residential East Cambridge neighborhood.

We all need to educate ourselves about planning if we're going to have a Cambridge that is livable, affordable and diverse as we approach a challenging future.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/09/14/vermont-milestone-green-energy-efforts/fsLHJl4eoqv6QoFNewRYBK/story.html

http://www.burlingtonvt.gov/PZ/Municipal-Development-Plan

The 1991 Burlington Municipal Development Plan was Burlington's first plan to be guided by the goals of Act 200. A new approach to the update of the Municipal Development Plan, now branded planBTV, has recently been developed in Burlington. Instead of preparing an overall update every 5 years, the Department of Planning & Zoning is now constantly working on various area-wide master plans or topic specific plans that eventually update the relevant chapters of this plan. The recent 2013 Downtown & Waterfront Master Plan is a great example of this new approach, which will allows for a more in-depth look and understanding of the dynamics and character of each distinct city neighborhood.

__________________________
Nancy Ryan
Nancyryan4@comcast.net
617-868-1334 (h)
617-642-5449 (c)