Report Of The Affordable Housing Task Force Shelburne Vermont

Includes special and extra sessions.

Urban agriculture is rising steadily in popularity in the United States and Canada - there are stories in the popular press, it has an increasingly central place in the growing local food movement, and there is a palpable interest in changing cities to foster both healthier residents and more sustainable communities. The most popular form of urban agriculture, community gardening, contributes significantly to developing social connections, building capacity, and empowering communities in urban neighborhoods. Older, industrial cities such as Cleveland, Detroit, and Buffalo, with their drastic loss of population and their acres of vacant land, are emerging as centers for urban agriculture initiatives - in essence, becoming laboratories for the future role of urban food production in the postindustrial city. Because urban agriculture entails the use of urban land, it has implications for urban land-use planning, which is controlled and regulated by municipal governments and planning agencies. This PAS Report provides authoritative guidance for dealing with the implications of this cutting-edge practice that is changing our cities forever.

A lavishly illustrated study of the natural and cultural history of the Vermont landscape. In this book Jan Albers examines the history—natural, environmental, social, and ultimately human—of one of America's most cherished landscapes: Vermont. Albers shows how Vermont has come to stand for the ideal of unspoiled rural community, examining both the basis of the state's pastoral image and the equally real toll taken by the pressure of human hands on the land. She begins with the relatively light touch of Vermont's Native Americans, then shows how European settlers—armed with a conviction that their claim to the land was "a God-given right"—shaped the landscape both to meet economic needs and to satisfy philosophical beliefs. The often turbulent result: a conflict between practical requirements and romantic ideals that has persisted to this day. Making lively use of contemporary accounts, advertisements, maps, landscape paintings, and vintage photographs, Albers delves into the stories and personalities behind the development of a succession of Vermont landscapes. She observes the growth of communities from tiny settlements to picturesque villages to bustling cities; traces the development of agriculture, forestry, mining, industry, and the influence of burgeoning technology; and proceeds to the growth of environmental consciousness, aided by both private initiative and governmental regulation. She reveals how as community strengthens, so does responsible stewardship of the land. Albers shows that like any landscape, the Vermont landscape reflects the human decisions that have been made about it—and that the more a community understands about how such decisions have been made, the better will be its future decisions.

Grade level: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, k, p, e, i, t.