Smart Growth and
Healthy Communities

Maine communities, and the state as a whole, at times experience divisive, expensive, and sometimes protracted conflicts. At the local level, many of these disputes are over land use. They may arise from proposed or actual changes in land use which are undesired by current residents. Or, conversely, they may arise from an

influx of new residents to a community who are opposed to certain existing land uses.

Maine also continues to experience regional and statewide conflicts, which in the recent past have included Atlantic Salmon preservation, fisheries management, pipeline siting, forest practices, Maine Yankee, turnpike widening, agricultural irrigation, and dam re-licensing. Collaborative decision-making offers a way to settle these types of conflicts that is efficient, community-building, and providing of the most benefits to the most people.

 

Related Mainewatch Publications:

  • Rediscovering Forgotten Asset: Trails for the 21st Century
    (executive summary PDF)
    Rediscovering Forgotten Asset: Trails for the 21st Century
    (methodology report PDF- 1.5mg)

  • Green Development (1992)

  • Western Mountains of Maine (1989)

These reports are in PDF format. To read PDF's you need Acrobat Reader, a free downloadable program. Download Acrobat Reader

For more information visit the website of Growsmart Maine: http://www.growsmartmaine.org/

 

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Mainewatch Institute,
c/o Forrest Bell

97A Exchange Street , Suite 305
Portland , ME 04101
207-650-7597