Name Change Shows the Tide has Turned
My hometown newspaper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, MA, noted today that the City of Northampton’s Office of Planning and Development has been renamed the Office of Planning and Sustainability.
When I moved to town in 1981, Northampton was in the midst of a building boom and developers were snapping up large farm and forest parcels on the fringes of town. Sprawl was the order of the day.
Now, huge amount of acreage have been protected, both in Northampton and all surrounding communities; Hadley, the neighboring town where I currently live, has preserved thousands of acres. And the City of Northampton has openly changed the mission of the planning department to embrace sustainability.
