If you like bucolic scenes, a visit to Exeter yields the requisite stone walls, hard woods, split rail fences and characters not afraid to wear work clothes or facial hair. And if the state’s smart-growth community has its way, the town will retain those features that make it distinctive.
But maintaining the state’s green space in the face of continuing pressure to develop South County requires planning and investment – exactly what a new project underwritten by the Nature Conservancy, the R.I. Economic Policy Council and the Orton Family Foundation hopes to provide. The 18-month program will identify sites to create village centers without spoiling Exeter’s undeveloped and unprotected wild spaces.
In a way, the project mirrors Providence’s Comprehensive Plan process, with neighborhood charrettes to address local concerns.
The planners and funders hope to understand what makes Exeter (and Connecticut’s Killingly, the other city chosen for the $200,000 project) special, and how to accommodate growth without destroying that unique essence.
Such planning is painstaking and slow, but it results in much healthier, authentic, sustainable communities. •
