The Borderlands Project Web Log

ENJOYING AND PROTECTING SPECIAL PLACES

“We never knew this place existed.” “When our daughters come to visit next month, we are planning to take them back to see this.” And so, this is how we began our Water Access program as part of the Borderlands Pilot project in Killingly.

The team was about a year into the process and in our surveys the community was looking for ways to gain access to the waterways, lakes, and ponds in the Borderlands area. Our thought was that if we could begin by organizing events, we could further the access issue. Also, our belief was that if more people had the opportunity to experience the natural surroundings on the water, they would gain in appreciation of these resources.

In our first year, we coordinated two formal events and eight informal paddles. The formal events were on weekends and had between 20 and 25 paddlers. The informal events were smaller groups, mostly on summer evenings. We would gather at a pond or put in point after the work day and paddle for a couple of hours. These events allowed individual paddlers to join a group setting and see a new pond or river section. As the summer paddles continued, the group continued to grow.

What was most interesting, were the comments of long time area residents. In its Industrial past, the rivers in the area suffered from poor disposal practices. However, with the improvements in the last 40 years, the rivers are in much better condition for recreational use. The Pilot Team had the belief that if we could get people to experience the area they would grow in appreciation. Further, as they gained in appreciation, they would want to want to protect and preserve the resources so that others could enjoy these special places. As time passed, we began to hear this message. We began to encounter people we had paddled with in the spring and they would tell us how they had gone back, or tried a new pond in the area. When we ran a river cleanup in September, we had a large number of volunteers on a drizzly Saturday morning. However, we were also contacted by a number of people who couldn’t make this one, but wanted to be included in the future.

What is the future? In Killingly, we have plans for both formal and informal events during this coming paddling season. We hear that one of the local retailers (whose store in on the Five Mile River) is going to sell Kayaks this year. We will have another river cleanup (in a new location) this year.

Most importantly: ‘the more we enjoy the resource, the more we protect it’, seems to be proving itself to be true.

KILLINGLY PADDLE

The residents of the Town of Killingly have spoken, and they say they care about their water. Killingly’s residents, as part of the Borderlands Project, identified water as one local asset they all want to preserve and promote. In response to this community-wide appeal, the Killingly Conservation Commission, in conjunction with The Last Green Valley, sponsored Get Out & Play as part of the Source to Sea event. Get Out & Play inspired paddlers in canoes and kayaks to do just that throughout the summer in a series of informal paddles on the Five Mile River, the Quinebaug River, the Wauregan Reservoir and Old Killingly Pond.

These paddles are just the beginning of improved water access for all residents of Killingly. If you’d like to become involved in improving the Town’s access to its rivers, streams and ponds, please visit http://paddlekillingly.webs.com.

Find out from a few of the participants how they enjoyed the experience!

Ed Eramian:

On May 9th, we had a group of 22 canoes and kayaks to paddle two sections of the Five Mile River (mostly) in Killingly. We actually started in Putnam and after a mile or so crossed the Killingly line.

As the trip coordinator, I had paddled the river several times to assure that we were prepared. My comments are observations from people who had not paddled the area before that day. In the first 4 miles, (Putnam/Killingly), paddlers were excited by the 'wilderness' feel of the paddle. Most of the paddlers were from a five to ten mile radius of the paddle, yet the comments were mostly, 'I never even knew that this existed.' Several people wanted to come back later and bring friends or family to have them 'discover' this place.

The second segment was from the back of the Killingly Commons property to the center of Danielson. Here, the comments were directed at how much more scenic and private the river was even though it travelled through developed areas. Due to the (current) existing buffers, you can hear civilization from time to time, but you don't see it.

Our belief has been that if people experience the natural resources of the area they will enjoy them. And when they enjoy them they will value the resource and be interested in protecting them. The trip in the Spring reinforced that belief for me.

Janice Thurlow:

This spring as part of the Borderlands Project and Killingly’s Conservation Commission a group of us trekked the Five Mile River from nearby Putnam in to Killingly. The trip was done in two parts we started with the slower meandering section from Putnam to the Pineville village of Killingly at that point we stopped for lunch. The second part of our paddle trip went from behind Target in Killingly’s new shopping center again down the Five Mile to just off Main Street, this section of the river was a little wider and faster. This event was one of the most enjoyable experiences I have had. My husband Keith and I were positioned at the back of the group to be there if anyone needed help, it was the best spot to be.

The group consisted of teenagers with their MP3’s riding along with their parents, boy scouts, teakwood canoe’s, new kayaks purchased just to be a part of this day as well as weathered kayaks, who along with their riders have paddled many bodies of water. We enjoyed the sites that the river had for us from beaver huts, one with its own mailbox, turtles basking in the sun, birds and views of our town from angles we have never saw before.

Along the way we saw people enjoying quiet time with their fishing poles, fishing season had just opened. At one stretch of the river there was a man in his boat, being at the back of the group we took a few moments to stop and talk. He said he has fished that section of the river for 25 years, he loved the quiet; it also proved to be a great spot for fish. He did however scratch his head as our group one by one passed by him; as he talked with us he asked about our group and how we came to paddling down the river. As we were leaving he said that in all the 25 years that he has fished at that spot he has never seen so many people at one time go down the river, but that he was glad to see people enjoying the river like he does.

Both my husband and I enjoyed this trip and the several others that our group had done over the last few months, Killingly has a lot of beautiful water areas to enjoy, it is my hope that if we keep doing this many others will join us.

Virge Lorent:

The August 15 Paddle Killingly event was a trip up the Five Mile River, starting in Danielson, which is in the Town of Killingly, and pooping out from the heat by the stone railroad bridge near Rock Avenue. The following image of the bridge was taken by others on a previous paddle on the Five Mile: http://paddlekillingly.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoid=44670431

The trip will be memorable because I persuaded my son to join me. He will be leaving for college for the first time in a few days and I wanted something to put in my memory bank. The day was hot. The sun was really bright. Franco and I were joined by Ed Eramian, who helped create the weekly Killingly paddle events, and Sharon from Hopkinton, Rhode Island, who somehow found out about our doings and regularly joins us. This paddle, like the others in this series, was an eye-opener. The shoreline is so unpopulated and with so many kinds of plant life and wildlife, though I know that "civilization" is close nearby. The cacophony of bird calls and insect buzzings sounded like the jungle. On a previous trip on the Five Mile, pickerel weed predominated the scenery. This time, an unknown crimson flower on a tall stem, backlit by bright sun, grabbed my attention. Our canoe got snagged by an underwater tree trunk. From my vantage point, I couldn't see that a branch curved under the canoe, up the other side. No amount of pushing on the trunk with our paddles freed us, so I'm glad Ed was there to toss us a line, give us a good tug and liberate us.

My son and I are both smart alecks, so coordinating our strokes eluded us until the last 15 minutes of the trip. Oh, well. Maybe when he's older, he'll be willing to go with me on some bigger adventure.

Preferably in kayaks, so no coordination skills will be required.

VILLAGE INNOVATION PROJECT UPDATE

Now that we’re one-year, and about halfway through the Village Innovation Pilot, we have already learned quite a few lessons, from the mundane (now we know where to get the best pizza) to the lofty (local Pilot Teams are essential for project success). I wanted to take some time to put fingers to keyboard and spell out what I think are the most salient points we’ve learned in talking about villages, heart, and soul in Killingly and Exeter.

You Can’t Get Enough Participation, But Getting Participation is the Hardest Thing:
All visioning projects take a cue from the marketers of the world and rely on two tried and tested tools – money and word-of-mouth. An investment in mass mailings would probably have increased our attendance in both towns, but perhaps even more effectively in Exeter (being a small rural town with less meeting “noise”). We learned that lesson a little late, but we did allocate a little money for basic expenses, but if I were to budget this project again I would have tripled that budget line and felt confident it would have paid dividends in participation.

Where’s the Beef?
The word-of-mouth would have been more effective if there had been a little bit of, dare I say it, controversy or conflict. Citizens are reluctant to spend precious evening/weekend time discussing their future unless they feel like they have a stake in the outcome, and that is hard to do unless there is a very tangible thing that motivates them. Unfortunately, as so many planners and citizen volunteers know, those “motivating moments” often occur when the development plan is on the table, and not when the vision is laid out. If we had something to discuss that people had a beef with, our turnout would have soared. Moving forward we’ll have a bit more controversy about actual sites so I suspect we’ll get more folks tuning in.

There Is No Replacement For Motivated Citizen Volunteers:
It’s hard to imagine that in the first month or two of working with Killingly and Exeter that we were going to work solely with the town staff and elected officials. Both towns rightly said “We want to form a committee.” And thank goodness they did. Both “Pilot Teams” have been sources of energy, commitment, ideas, expertise, and of course local knowledge. Without their participation, the Pilot project simply wouldn’t have worked, in retrospect. I would suggest to anyone putting together a project like this add “local committee” to the top of their checklist, and push the elected officials to sanction, promote, and/or fill the committee. A community group will ground the project in the reality of the community you’re working in and will be a critical sounding board for a host of issues, from what space to use for the meeting to what scope the project should be.

Go Slow to Go Fast:
Even though it was too slow for some people, we spent a few extra months getting the local Pilot Team comfortable with the project and we spaced the public meetings out to allow the work to proceed. We had hoped to have the Heart and Soul done in six months, but in reality it took a year. But it was a year well spent. We have a cadre of committed volunteers who can speak for the project, and we built up enough awareness of the project so that we have a good foundation for moving forward on specific issues. This foundation is critical to the project gaining traction in the communities and in making real change possible for both town’s future.

I’m thrilled we’re making such good progress and that we’ve really hit on a core issue for these towns: compact development is indeed a good idea and there are many challenges to making that a reality. The next twelve months should reveal a lot about what specific things need to happen to make that vision a reality.

Kevin Essington, Dir., Borderlands Landscape Program, The Nature Conservancy

Fall Visioning Process

Both Borderlands Pilot Towns are busy preparing for their fall public workshops.  Exeter's public workshop is October 29 at the Metcalf Elementary School.  Killingly's public workshop is October 27 at the Westfield Congregational Church.  At both workshops, community residents will actively participate in the planning process, using innovative techniques to investigate alternative development options for their town.  For more information about the workshop or to download a workshop poster see the town webpages at www.borderlandsproject.org

The results of the online community surveys that were conducted last spring and summer are posted on the town webpages.  Check it out and see what's important to your community.

Each town also has a couple unique activities underway.  In Exeter, they are working with the local high school to develop a student project focusing on the pilot project.  Some students might even conduct interviews on their local cable channel.  Hopefully these efforts will generate enthusiasim for more folks to participate in the workshop and the project.

In Killingly, a University of Connecticut Senior Landscape Architecture Studio will focus it's efforts on the Route 101 Corridor at the end of the semester.  Students will attend the public workshop to learn more about the project and then investigate design alternatives based on the issues identified at the workshop.

This past weekend James Kent Associates a group of Social Ecologists also visited Killingly.  JKA brings a whole new approach designed to build consensus by getting to the issues at the grassroots level.  Pilot team members were encouraged to go out into the community to places they weren't familiar with and to gathering places - to observe and to listen.  Many team members commented that the training got them thinking in new ways.  We hope to incoporate information learned through the JKA approach into the ongoing process.

Susan Westa, Borderlands Pilot Coordinator 

H&S VISIONING UPDATE

In June, the first set of Heart and Soul Visioning Workshops were held in Killingly and Exeter.  Preliminary results of the online community surveys and focus group interviews were presented.  The most exciting part of the evening was the key pad polling exercise.  Images and questions were posted on a screen and folks were asked to rank or prioritize - what they liked or didn't like, what was important to their community, and a whole range of questions.  This was a really fun way to get everyone in the room participating in the workshop.  The results of the key pad polling are posted on the town pages of the Borderlands website.  http://www.borderlandsproject.org/index.asp?col1=villagepilot_Exeter.asp  and http://www.borderlandsproject.org/index.asp?col1=villagepilot_Killingly.asp

Over the summer the pilot teams in both towns will be busy planning the next steps of this process and the fall workshops.  If you'd like to become involved in this project or just have some questions, please feel free to contact me, Susan Westa, Borderlands VIP Coordinator at susan.westa@uconn.edu or 860-774-9600.

HEART AND SOUL VISIONING PROCESS

The Borderlands Pilot towns, Killingly CT and Exeter RI, are off to a great start with Phase I, the Heart and Soul Visioning Process.  The pilot teams have been meeting on a monthly basis to plan the activities of this phase.  The first public outreach activities are focus group interviews.  Pilot team members have reached out to the community to identify members of the various stakeholder groups and encourage them to attend group interviews.  This is the first step in identifying the heart and soul of the pilot towns.  Questions will be asked such as, "What if lost in your town, would change it forever?" and "What three words or phrases would you use to describe your town?"  The results of the focus group interviews will be used to inform the rest of the visioning process.

Next steps of Phase I include an online community survey and visioning workshops.  The surveys will be online within the next two weeks and we encourage everyone to participate.  This activity is designed to get input from folks who won't or can't attend group events and to ask more detailed questions based on the results of the focus group interviews.  The survey results will be presented at the Visioning Workshops which will be held on June 9 in Killingly and on June 12 in Exeter.  There will be a variety of hands-on activities as well, including the use of key pad polling to get immediate feedback from the audience.  There will also be another Visioning Workshop in September where all of this information will be compiled and used to develop a vision for future of the pilot towns.

Please help us spread the word about these exciting projects.  If you are looking for more information you can see the project website at www.borderlandsproject.org or contact me, Susan Westa Borderlands VIP Coordinator, at susan.westa@uconn.edu or 860-774-9600.

Pilot Towns Selected

The Borderlands Project recently selected the towns of Killingly, CT and Exeter, RI as the two towns for the Village Innovation Pilot.  They were selected from a pool of 12 towns that applied (out of the possible 20 Borderlands towns).

The Pilot is a strategic planning initiative that will examine ways to conserve critical lands by channelling new growth into existing or planned village centers.  Killingly and Exeter expressed a strong interest in working through this challenge as part of the Pilot.

Both towns are currently putting together local teams to help guide the Pilot at the local level.  These groups will work with Pilot staff and the Pilot's bi-state Advisory Group to help shape the Pilot process in the coming months.

The first phase of the Pilot will be a robust visioning process where we hope to learn from the community members what qualities and places are most important to them to protect and enhance and what challenges they see facing their town in the future.  We hope to kick off the visioning work in early 2008.

While the two towns will be going through this process seperately, we plan to provide opportunities for the two to learn from each other as well as share lessons learned with the larger Borderlands region.  We'll be posting information regularly to the Borderlands website and plan to hold several regional sharing events throughout the course of the Pilot.

For more information on the Pilot and to find out how you can get involved in Exeter or Killingly, go to http://www.borderlandsproject.org/index.asp?col1=villagepilot.asp.

Ariana McBride, Economic Development Planner, RI Economic Policy Council

Village Innovation Pilot

The Borderlands Project launched its Village Innovation Pilot today.  The Pilot is a strategic planning initiative being offered to two Borderlands towns (one in CT, one in RI) who want to conserve critical lands by channeling new growth into existing or planned village centers. We've issued an invitation to Borderlands towns to express their interest and are looking forward to questions and ultimately responses from these towns.

The Pilot is the evolution of an idea raised at a pair of Borderlands meetings in 2005 - that the relationship between traditional village development and surrounding rural lands is an important one and can offer us lessons about how we go about achieving economic and residential development as well as land protection.  Unfortunately, a lack of resources and a complex web of regulations often hinder communities' ability to explore this link.

The Pilot aspires to rise to this challenge.  It aims to bring resources and expertise to two towns to help them work through these issues.  With a strong bi-state Advisory Group and support from innovative organizations like the Orton Family Foundation, I think we're off to a good start.  But the key to the Pilot's success will be the two Borderlands towns who ultimately serve as the Pilot communities - we intend for this to be a process driven by the towns and their citizens - we want to respond to your challenges and aspirations. We know it may seem like a very open-ended invitation - it is!  You tell us what you need.   And in the process we may find new ways to address community growth and conservation.

It will be experimental, it will be hard work, it will result in on the ground implementation, and it will on occasion even be fun!  So, please look over the materials on the website and feel free to contact us with questions.  We look forward to your input!

Ariana McBride, Economic Development Planner, RI Economic Policy Council

Innovative Planning & Development

by Susan Westa (Green Valley Institute)

Last year I was lucky enough to spend a year on sabbatical with my family on the “left side” of the country (as my daughter says).  As a planner it was especially interesting to see how different parts of the country are addressing many of the same land use issues we’re struggling with here in New England.

While in CA, we lived on the central coast in San Luis Obispo (SLO) County.  SLO County had been addressing growth through innovative planning and development techniques for over 20 years.  They decided early on that they didn’t want to grow the same way they saw Southern CA growing. 

One of the tools they have used to focus growth and protect important open space is Transfer of Development Rights (TDR).  The Land Conservancy of SLO County acts as a TDR Bank, facilitating the purchase of development rights from rural areas and selling development rights for increased density in downtowns and other areas identified for new growth.

The City of SLO, population of 45,000, is the center of the county and the home of Cal Poly University.  Morro Bay, population 10,000, is located about 20 minutes west of SLO on the coast.  Both cities have developed at urban densities and there is no sprawling development along Route 1 in between the two – no 2-acre residential lots and no sprawling commercial development.  There are some institutional uses and there is a significant amount of protected land.  This land has been protected through a variety of programs – agriculture, coastal zone and TDR.  It was really interesting to see how these programs can be used to make a difference.  

A region can grow smarter with the right tools in place and with innovative planning techniques.  The Borderlands Region and the Quinebaug-Shetucket Heritage Corridor should learn from the experiences of higher growth regions and implement theses tools before it’s too late.  Before we’ve lost those important farms, wildlife corridors and other open spaces we cherish and before our village centers and downtowns are lost to sprawling new development.  TDR is one of the many tools that could make a difference in how this region grows.

Frugality

by Vilma Gregoropolous

My family is known for being able to fix anything.  One day my uncle, Lino sent his son, Abe, out to the alley to fetch an old wheelbarrow he wanted to straighten out and use.  Abe walked up and down searching for a long time.  He saw a pile of rubbish but he didn’t see a wheelbarrow anywhere.  He finally went to his father empty-handed.  Lino walked him back out to the pile of rubbish, picked up some broken down parts that had in fact been a wheelbarrow in better days, and proceeded to rebuild it.  60 years later it still works better than anything you could buy at Home Depot.

My relatives came from a little town in northern Italy called the “Furnace of Zoldo”, where people knew how to make do with what they had. After they moved to North Stonington Village, Lino and my grandfather, Noah, ran a garage and forge that had clients from as far away as New York City. People knew they could fix anything, make parts from scratch, and, just as important, they didn’t charge much. They were in business to make a living, not make a killing.

Their mindset fit right in with the local Yankees who were just as well known for their frugality as their ingenuity. (I often think my family’s ability to fix anything was in fact, inspired by parsimony, and I’m guessing the same was probably true of the Swamp Yankees here in Connecticut.

North Stonington and many of the towns around it were working-class farm towns.  The character of the people who lived here was as important in shaping the town as the character of the land. Nothing was wasted, everything that could be used was put away for a rainy day or a long winter. Land was kept for farming and firewood.   People built farmhouses to fit the many generations of working hands that lived in them. They built small cottages by lakes – just enough room to eat and sleep in, because they knew they were going to be fishing and picking blueberries the whole time anyway.

All this has changed. Frugality has become a lost art.  People build houses that are five times as big as they need and burn what’s left of their money heating cathedral ceilings that give their homes all the cozy warmth of a hotel lobby. They build airport runways instead of driveways.  They clear-cut land to create views they will never see because they are never home: two incomes are generally needed to keep up the payments. And in five years they relocate and build another mansion.  Building has become an end in itself – conspicuous consumption designed to flaunt wealth.

The irony is that people move to towns like North Stonington in the first place because they want to live in the country. And thus, the guiding principle of every town plan is to “preserve the rural character”. We are more than willing to support conservation projects and land trusts.  But we must also be willing to adopt the character of the people who made Connecticut what it was, realizing again, as the Yankees did, that frugality is a virtue.   If the Borderlands region has preserved its character, it is because the people here knew enough not to squander what they had - whether it was a wood lot or a wheelbarrow.

Learning More About Exeter, RI's New Mixed Use Ordinance

David Schweid

On August 7, 2006 the Exeter Town Council approved an ordinance to amend the zoning regulations to allow, by special use permit, residential development on the second and third floors above commercial structures in the B (business) and LB/R (light business/residential) zones.

This is a concept that has been talked about in Exeter for some time. It was discussed in the early 1990’s as part of the original work on the Comprehensive Plan for Exeter. It was formally adopted in 2005 as one of the five strategies proposed in the approved Affordable Housing Plan (now Appendix C of the Exeter Comprehensive Plan). In the Affordable Housing Plan, this strategy is forecasted to produce 40 units of low or moderate income housing over a period of twenty years. Some of the advantages of this type of development are:

• Encourages economic growth
• Facilitates village-style, pedestrian friendly development
• Promotes compact growth with a small footprint, minimizing sprawl
• Promotes the “live-work” concept, allowing people to live above their workplace
• Produces low and moderate income housing (the ordinance requires 20% of all units be deed restricted for persons of low or moderate income)

There is good reason to believe this type of development will be attractive to private developers. First, there is very little multi-family development in Exeter, so a healthy demand exists. Second, this type of development is generally very cost effective as it builds on and shares the infrastructure already in place for the commercial development; septic, well, storm water management system, parking, driveways, and even foundation and utility connections, may already be in place, thus greatly reducing the construction costs.

The ordinance has built-in controls designed to insure that the regulation is used to create the type of development intended. It has a maximum density of one unit per acre, it severely limits ground floor construction, and requires that residential development does not exceed the square footage of commercial development. Finally, there is a requirement that any such development contain a minimum of 20% low and/or moderate income units.

Partly because the commercial zones in Exeter are limited to Route 2 and Route 3, there was little local opposition to this proposal. The process moved fairly smoothly, if not quickly, from concept to ordinance. The only significant controversy came from an unexpected quarter, RI Housing. RI Housing had concerns about the economic viability of the density, and even went so far as to suggest that this ordinance might not be considered a “local subsidy”. Without that designation, the LMI units produced under this ordinance would not count toward Exeter’s required 10% quota. On the face of it, this seemed extraordinary, since RI Housing had already approved this strategy in the Town’s Affordable Housing Plan. Ultimately, this has been resolved with the understanding that this ordinance is a density bonus and that if it creates qualifying affordable housing, that housing will be counted.

RI Housing also pointed out technical concerns with the ordinance, including the need to establish a process for monitoring the continued affordability of the LMI units over time. This concern and other similar technical issues, will be addressed in our inclusionary zoning ordinance, yet to be written. Exeter,like seven other South County towns, is looking to a regional Targeted Assistance Grant (TAG) from RI Housing to help develop an inclusionay zoning ordinance. In retrospect, it would certainly be preferable to develop a comprehensive inclusionary zoning ordinance that would address subdivisions, age-restricted housing, and mixed use at one fell swoop. Due to the fact that there is an opportunity to create a mixed use development now, it was not possible to wait. After all, it is true what they say, timing is everything.

Presentations from Reinventing the Village Event

We've just posted four of the five presentations from the panel discussion, Reinventing the Village:  Perspectives on Economic Development and Affordable Housing in the Borderlands (held May 4, 2006).  In addition to the presentation slides, we have provided audio of the event so you can get the full experience!  We hope to have the fifth presentation and Q&A up soon.  Some of the files are on the larger size (up to 10 MB) so may require some time to download.  Also, if you are interested in receiving a cd of the presentations at a higher resolution, please email me at ariana@ripolicy.org.

We'd love to get your feedback on the event if you attended or on the presentations if you are just hearing them for the first time.  Did the presentations meet your expectations? Do you still have questions you'd like to pose to the panelists? 

And as we plan for future events, we would love to have your suggestions on topics to cover.  To post your ideas, just click on "Comments" underneath this message, which will take you to a screen where you can post your own comment.

We look forward to your thoughts!

- Ariana McBride

Wednesday Night is the Super Bowl!

David Preston

There can't be a much bigger event in Borderlands history in recent memory - or in the foreseeable future - than Wednesday night's West Greenwich town meeting.  This is the Financial Town Meeting where the town will decide whether to sell bonds to preserve 1,500+ acres of open space.  If you have friends, relatives or even vague acquaintances who live in West Greenwich, please contact them and URGE THEM TO ATTEND WEDNESDAY NIGHT'S MEETING AND VOTE YES!

The meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, 7:30 pm at the high school on Rt. 3.

The Borderlands: Past, Present & Future?

by Kevin Essington, The Nature Conservancy

When you hear “The Borderlands,” the twenty towns along the CT/RI border, what do you think of?  Forests?  Farms?  Villages?  Rural homesites?  Dark skies?  Quiet roads?  Easy trips to cities?  Families?  Jobs?  Recreation?  Open roads?

Of course.  You probably think of all of these things.  Sometimes contradictory things, all at once.  Because like many rural places in America, it is a complicated and dynamic place, where people and “nature” meet.  Each on their own terms.  The rugged landscape of the Borderlands tells us where we can and can’t build or farm.  The demands of our modern society in turn set prices for the use of land and water that dictate how we build and where.

Indeed, for thousands of years, people have lived in the Borderlands.  Sometimes permanently, sometimes just passing through.  As Europeans “settled” the area, the axe and plow were put to work to make way for farms and later, villages.  But the Borderlands was one of the last places in Connecticut and Rhode Island to be “settled” and then one of the first to be “un-settled” as the tough, unforgiving rock, sand, and muck finally wore down the areas farmers.And while the people who settled these places have moved on, their names and the places they lived remain.  Tillinghast, Tefft, Dawley, Campbell, Brown: the list is too long and could never be comprehensive.  As farming faded as a way of life in the Borderlands, the forests reclaimed the fields but roads, hills, and ponds kept their names.

Like the farm and forest economy, the villages in the Borderlands faded, to varying degrees, too.  Places like Escoheag, Ashwillet, Pachaug, and West Greenwich Center are hardly recognizable today, if they’re there at all. But other villages like North Stonington, Rockville, Greene, Oneco, Voluntown are there, with businesses, libraries, homes, town halls, stores, restaurants, and most of all, people.  These places are alive with people and history and, I daresay, with a future.

To me, it seems that these villages will be here for generations to come.  Conversely, who believes that the rural housing pattern that we see unfolding before us on an almost daily basis will be here when our grand-children are grown?  When gasoline is $9 per gallon will we still want to live by ourselves in our two-acre enclaves?  When the large lot development pattern has used up all the remaining spaces in our towns will we still have the “country” at our doorstep?

Could there be a better approach?  Could we use our villages as the nodes for future commercial and residential growth?  Can we create new villages? Can we create (pardon the euphemism) “village of tomorrow” that will provide economic and housing opportunities while also retaining the rural landscape in which the village is nested?

In working for and with The Nature Conservancy since 1995, I have been fortunate to visit many beautiful natural places all over the country and (somewhat) the world.  But even as a conservationist and a naturalist, my memories of these places are seen through the windows of the built environment in which I traveled.  As human beings, we need both a quality built environment and a rural place to grow food and fiber.  As Americans in particular, we need to know that a “wild” place exists – is a proven part of our national psyche.  Villages can get us there.

I propose that the Borderlands collaborative use the deep experience of the people living and working here to guide the region towards a vision that achieves both goals: creating a living, working, built environment that is nested within a much broader undeveloped landscape.  Give our grand-children the flexibility they will need to live in a world that we can only vaguely predict.  Make our villages the center of our civic and working lives…and leave the farms and forests for the future.

Welcome to the Borderlands Website & Blog

Thank you for visiting the Borderlands Project Website and Blog. As the homepage states, the purpose of this site is to provide you with information on the Borderlands Project, stimulate discussion on its future direction, and give you links to related resources that may be of interest. I encourage you to surf the site and send me any thoughts or suggestions - better yet, use the blog by adding a comment to this posting

Please note that we will improve this site over the coming months so make sure to check the website regularly for updates. Also, I'll be sending out notices on upcoming events and new postings via email. If you are not currently on our email list and would like to be, please fill out the contact form under the Contact Us tab on the website.

We are looking forward to your interest and participation in the Borderlands Project!

Ariana McBride, RI Economic Policy Council