Essex County Smart Growth Guidebook
We will be releasing a new publication The Essex County Smart Growth Guidebook. The guidebook will document projects that demonstrate how the County’s natural, cultural and historic heritage can be preserved and enhanced using smart growth tools and strategies. Projects were selected to include geographic diversity, a mix of rural, suburban and urban projects, and a range of smart growth and preservation techniques. The guidebook will provide on-the-ground, local success stories that can encourage and instruct other communities to undertake similar projects. The goal of this project is to further the protection, preservation, and restoration of our communities’ natural, cultural, and historic resources. A previous publication , Preserving the Future: a Guide for Creating a Municipal Open Space Inventory is available at http://www.essexcountyforum.org/documents/PreservingFutureGuidebook05.pdf
Author Event - The World Without Us
The Essex County Forum and the Newburyport Literary Association, Inc. recently hosted NY Times bestselling author, Alan Weisman author of The World Without Us.
Heralded in the Boston Globe as "extraordinarily farsighted," in the NY Times Book Review as "Grandly entertaining," and in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, as "An astonishing mass of reportage," Weisman vibrantly portrays an Earth where humans have vanished into thin air, a planet that nature has been allowed to repossess. Through the beautiful devastation of the manmade world, Weisman grapples with the ancient human dilemma of how to coexist with the mysterious forces of nature that simultaneously support and threaten mankind. In the imagined destruction of the world we know, Weisman finds solutions.
To learn more visit:
World Without Us Newburyport Literary Festival
Susan Jones Moses and Essex County Greenbelt receive Gulf of Maine Visionary Award
The Gulf of Maine Visionary Awards recognize the contributions of people working to improve the health and future well being of the Gulf of Maine. Innovative and highly committed, these "visionaries" have spent years making the Gulf a better place. Each year, the Gulf of Maine Council gives two visionary awards to individuals or organizations in each state and province bordering the Gulf. Read the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs press release at http://www.mass.gov/envir/press/pressreleases/061407_gulfofmaine_awards.pdf.
Smart Growth Technical Assistance
Be proactive! Be prepared! While the real estate market is down and development is slow, take the opportunity to review and update your zoning bylaws to include smart growth tools. Don’t wait until the next development wave to think about updating your bylaws! To discuss smart growth tools and evaluate which tools might make sense for your community, call us at 978-621-2830 for technical assistance and professional planning advice.
Workshop Presentations
Each year we offer a series of workshops on timely smart growth topics. our workshops are free and open to the public. We seek to reach the broadest audience possible. To date we have covered affordable housing, land conservation, model zoning bylaws, low impact development, and historic preservation to name a few. If you missed a workshop and would like to learn more, please visit Past Events
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Ravenswood Park,
Gloucester
Hepatica, Bald Hill Reservation,
Boxford
Birdsfoot Trefoil, Appleton Farms, Ipswich
Cedar Pond Wildlife Sanctuary,
Wenham
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