From the Director, December 2022: Small is Beautiful
- Details
Sometimes the best planning a town can do is around a small project that builds community ties. This can be particularly important if the town has been dealing with issues around which there’s no broad consensus, and that may have stoked emotions or created or reinforced sides. There’s almost always something the town wants or needs that’s achievable, and it’s through these projects that relationships can be strengthened, trust can be built, and real, tangible outcomes can be achieved for all.
It is not at all unusual for a planning process, including the development of town plans or zoning bylaws, to generate tension. Our volunteer planning commissions assume a lot of responsibility when they take on these efforts, and it’s hard work that may not be given the appreciation it’s due, especially in the moment. But that same planning commission can use its skills and structure to take on smaller projects, often in collaboration with other groups in town, to make great things happen. Perhaps its collaborating with the Conservation Commission to improve maps and signage for the town forest. Maybe it’s working with the historical society on a successful proposal to make a meeting hall more useable by all members of the community. Or perhaps a youth or recreation committee would like to set up a temporary ice rink on a village green or behind the town office. More likely than not there’s something in the town plan itself or that came out of a town planning process (including Vermont Council on Rural Development community visits) that would lend itself to building community and moving the town forward.
Planning is ultimately about relationships among people, their care for a place and one another, and a future in which they can see themselves and their neighbors. This is what motivates me as a planner, both as a professional and as a volunteer before that. I have a deep appreciation for Wendell Berry’s characterization of community from his book The Long-Legged House (which you may have heard me quote before):
“A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other's lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves.”
Move forward as best as you can. Pursue a project where individuals and groups come together to make progress and, perhaps, find some joy. There is opportunity in impasse. As Wendell Berry wrote in his work Standing By Words:
“It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.”
