informed decisions. We aren't pushing them to go one way or the other; we're just providing good information." Projects like this are an invaluable service for communities without the resources to invest in full-time planners or giS technology. individuals without access to expensive design and planning services also benefit. The Route 3 presentation, says isabel, "eventually resulted in alternative development plans and a series of conservation easements" on several properties. those plans exchanged sprawl-type housing for cluster housing. this preserves open land and reduces energy and material expenditure by placing residential units in neighborly clusters, such as CoA's sustainable student housing complex, the Kathryn W. Davis Student Residence Village. "The work CoA did with clustering was very influential," says Terry Kelley. When the Maine Coast heritage trust and the Mount Desert island housing Authority teamed up to conserve and selectively develop affordable housing on Bar harbor's northeast Creek, they looked to COA's Davis Village for inspiration. It suited the context of the land and the residents. Another group of land Use Planning students found that in the zoning for the fertile strip of soil along the Crooked Road, the island's "bread basket," agriculture was not listed as a permitted use. they were investigating the status of the fogg farm at the request of its owner. "it had been a dairy farm," isabel says, "but it had lain fallow for more than a year and could not be used as a farm anymore — farming was only a 'grandfathered' permitted use!" "We went to the planning board and showed them what was going on and pointed out the error in their zoning ordinance. they asked us to take it to the town council, and to look town-wide to see if that same situation occurred in other places. the students found three other zones where there were prime agricultural soils," but farming was not allowed. "existing farms could remain, but if they lay fallow for a year College of the AtlAntiC MAgAzine
they would have to be subdivided, or developed." Members of isabel's class worked with the town council to change the zoning ordinances. the changes, which protected the island's farmlands from development, passed a town vote. Sometimes information is uncontroversial; it can easily lead to changes. At other times the information can be difficult to swallow. In commercial development, short-term gains are emphasized over the long-term losses of ecosystems, viewsheds, and local economies. But, says Gordon, "As ecological planners, we're committed to looking at different time-scales."
when the proposal was made, they were already working with town hill on a "mini-plan" for its village-like center. "they really got that project going," says Anne Krieg, former planning and development director for the island, "because they did a whole bunch of data sets — demographics, natural resource work, land use analysis. they did a whole layer of background data and then presented it to the residents in the area. We had a couple of workshops where they came and were able to present and get feedback … it made the project a lot more approachable."
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"Does it make sense in the long term?" isabel elaborates. "Most development is done in the reactionary mode — you know, 'that corporation will give me how much for my land?' But how does a big box retailer change the whole dynamic of a town like Bar Harbor? You really have to try and figure out what the unforeseen consequences might be of something before you embark on making a big change."
tudents created a series of maps that detailed the locations of wetlands, existing land uses, and the densities of prior development in town hill. then they conducted a visual impact analysis of proposed changes to the town's zoning ordinances, showing what the town would look like if instead of a supermarket, a more village-like atmosphere were sought, with setbacks moved closer to the roads and building heights lowered.
it is not in the interest of developers to consider consequences. When Bar harbor's hannaford grocery store — owned by a Belgian corporation — proposed to move to rural town hill, isabel's students were once again ready with maps and imagination. in fact,
When the Belgian corporation called a public meeting at MDi high School to discuss its proposal, says isabel, "People were asking them how big the new grocery store was going to be, and what it would look like. they said, 'Well, we have no real site plans yet, so we can't
The source of this topographic shaded relief model of the Route 3 corridor from Salisbury Cove to beyond Bar Harbor is LiDAR, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging. The detailed topographic data shown here is collected from an aircraft using laser beam measurements of the ground surface. over this layer is placed a land cover dataset derived from satellite imagery, showing numerous classes of land use and land cover types. the red area is the town of Bar Harbor, the brownish area north of town — designated as "developed, open space" — is College of the Atlantic, with Duck Brook a bit beyond. Courtesy of gordon longsworth '91.
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