Land Use

On the last weekend in January, a small crowd of onlookers gathers at the edge of Brookfield Pond in central Vermont for what is – these days – a most unusual spectacle. An odd contraption of wooden beams and iron hardware stands on a patch of ice surrounded by rusted old saws and oversized tongs. A local historian narrates as two men move to the center of the ice and begin sawing. After a few minutes they use a strange fork to pry loose a block more than a foot thick. An ingenious lever system easily lifts this 300-pound block of ice off the water and lands it safely on the surface, frozen before it hits the ground.

Welcome to the Brookfield Ice Harvest. It’s one of the last of its kind - an event that’s essentially a relic, carried out by small northern towns to celebrate history and liven up the long, frozen winter.

Until WWII, harvesting ice was a necessary part of life. Before refrigerators, this was the only way that families and general stores could keep food products cold in the warmer months. The mammoth blocks of ice were stored between layers of sawdust until they melted, at which point people were out of luck until the next winter.

My husband, daughter and I watched the spectacle last weekend until our toes numbed. As we headed back toward the car my husband shook his head. “Sure seems like a lot of work when you can just open up the fridge.”

That’s for sure. But there are also consequences to opening up the fridge – and a thousand other modern conveniences – that we don’t think about. We’re so used to having things exactly when, where and how we want them that we rarely give thought to whether we could do without, or perhaps even do better without. I’m not about to ditch my appliances and head for the river with a saw and pitchfork, but the ice harvest did get me thinking about how we could embrace more of that old time ethic in our home lives and our communities, and why we should.

My Yankee ancestors have been touting a phrase for generations: “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” I was excited to run across a new blog built on that concept, by blogger and writer Meg Hourihan. She’s challenged herself to buy nothing in 2012 except for what she’s used up or worn out. A great mantra and one that seems relatively easy to adopt until you’re faced with saying no to your niece’s request to buy girl scout cookies, or passing up that 90% off sale at your favorite store. But if we could all move in that direction, there’s no question our wallets, our closets, and especially the planet would be better for it.

If you’re intrigued but not quite ready to go whole hog, there are plenty of ways to start down this path. Closest Closet – one of last year’s CommunityMatters Strong Communities Competition applicants – is a unique project in Southern Maine that aims to help neighbors recycle and share, turning to each other rather than buying new. If you don’t happen to live in Southern Maine, check out the Freecycling Network – a similar concept, nationwide.

Communities often seem to do better than consumers at embracing this ethic, albeit by necessity. We’ve yet to hear about a town in the U.S. that isn’t facing budget shortfalls and cutbacks, and most places are pretty creative at making do and doing without when it comes to rec funds and school supplies. But the Minnesota non-profit Strong Towns has helped communities reexamine their decisions concerning land use and infrastructure improvements. Strong Towns’ “Curbside Chat” program and a companion booklet helps communities see why some “growth” and “progress” is actually setting us back.

Just as we want ice in July, we want bigger, smoother, nicer roads. We want new developments with views of the countryside. We want more growth, period. The problem is, the things that communities and consumers believe will make them stronger and wealthier often don’t.

I’m not a Luddite, and the message here isn’t that growth and conveniences are bad. But there are tradeoffs and there are alternatives – ones that people don’t often think about in today’s world. It is possible to harvest ice from a pond rather than pulling it out of the freezer. It’s possible to borrow that thingamajig from your neighbor’s garage rather than buying it online. It is possible to build our communities differently.

And it’s quite possible that using up, wearing out, and making do in some aspects of our lives and communities will prevent the very real possibility that we’ll have to do without in others.

Photo: Workshop participants take advantage of Belfast’s public art chairs while doing fieldwork.

Heart & Soul Community Planning is rooted in the idea that people share common values when it comes to what makes their cities and towns unique. Although the language people use may be similar across communities, the specifics of what people mean by that language can be quite different from place to place.

So how do you get beyond nebulous conversations about “sense of community” to a shared understanding of the specifics of your town? You get on the ground and figure it out.

Photo: Pincurbia, the Pop-up Park

The Atlantic Magazine recently printed an article titled “Temporary is the New Permanent.” It explains that in our current economic climate, with cities low on cash and an abundance of empty lots and abandoned buildings, temporary projects are taking off. Why?

Because land owners and bureaucracies are often more willing to sign off on non-permanent creative projects that can be easily adapted or scrapped than long-term, infrastructure-heavy projects, which tend to be more expensive and less easily altered. It’s a matter of practicality. Another huge plus is that grassroots organizations, architects, designers and volunteers who want to impact their communities can take a much more active role in such projects.

Photo: Martina Rathgens (Flickr: size matters) [CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

This morning on my way to work, I heard John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Born in a Small Town” on the radio. I cranked up the volume, rolled down the windows, and joined right in: “I was born in a small town, and I can breathe in a small town…”

As the words came out of my mouth, I felt a little hypocritical—I wasn’t born in a small town, I was born in Denver. (Incidentally, I am also able to breathe here in Denver, which is quite the feat.) What’s strange is, Denver feels like a small town. Each neighborhood has its own character, there’s intense loyalty to place, and it’s darn near impossible for me to go somewhere without running in to someone I know.

Yes, Thomas Friedman has done it again. He’s made me say “YES!” and “THANK YOU!” aloud to myself in my office.

Why? Because he’s “all stocked up on crazy,” and so am I. Friedman's New York Times Op-Ed column “Is It Weird Enough Yet?”, published on September 13, cuts to the quick of the absurdity and ignorance of recent (and past) claims that climate change is “some fraud perpetrated by scientists trying to gin up money for research.”

I happened to be reading this column while listening to The Climate Reality Project, a 24-hour, live, worldwide stream (currently in its 21^st hour) featuring experts and scientists from 24 time zones. One of these scientists was explaining that with each degree of warming, the atmosphere can hold more water—an unsettling percentage more that I have since forgotten, or blocked out.

Image: A boundary of the Living Bend site, transformed into a “linear greenstreet” with urban agriculture, native landscapes and an “integrated greenshade” featuring water catchment, solar PV and UV protection.

Fifteen years ago, Flagstaff, AZ, a small city perched on the edge of the Colorado Plateau, launched a community visioning project: Flagstaff 2020. It was the largest public dialogue ever conducted in Flagstaff, and the hot topics at the time were rapid growth and urban sprawl.

The result was a sweeping 25-year vision for the city, leading the way to some notable accomplishments:
completion of an Open Space and Greenways plan; institution of new logging practices in surrounding national forests; and a new downtown public square.

I work with people more than natural resources in our land use planning work here at the Foundation, so I sometimes miss the “purer” discussions around preservation or enhancement of a balanced, sustainable natural environment. That’s why I always eagerly await the next issue of Orion Magazine.

While the field of conservation has moved significantly towards the inclusion of humans in the discussion of and decisions about natural resources, the ethereal yet powerful spiritual elements of nature still find a constant thread in the articles, poetry and photography found throughout Orion.

Orion’s July/August was a different delight for me, however, as it looked at issues closer to home. It examines the interplay of climate change and peak oil and the responsibility of communities to plan accordingly and in a principled way.

The editors exhort the reader by asking, “When we take to the streets of our communities...shouldn’t we feel a sense of home that encompasses the past, the present and especially the future—a sense that our places are being made and remade to reflect the best of who we are and who we aim to become?” I’ve recently read two competing visions of how to answer these questions.

The Orton Family Foundation looks to reach and work with a number of audiences. Most often we orient our work toward elected officials and citizen planners and activists, and we regularly work with a small city or town’s planning staff.

Town Planners play a pivotal role in how their communities plan and engage. Recently the Planning Commissioner’s Journal held an interesting LinkedIn discussion exploring the concept of town planners as change agents.