Expert wants to turn land-use planning on its head

"You don't preserve rural character by dividing land up into two-acre lots" was the message the man who is perhaps the nation's foremost advocate of conservation oriented subdivision design brought to last night's annual meeting of the Lakes Region Planning Commission. About 120 people gathered at the Belknap Mill to listen to Randall Arendt give an hour-long presentation on the basics of "conservation design".

Earlier in the evening he conducted a two-hour seminar for members of Lakes Region land-use board members and planning department staffs.

Arendt, who is based in Narragansett, Rhode Island, has designed "conservation subdivisions" in 16 states and is the author of more than 20 publications, including "Rural by Design: Maintaining Small Town Character". He is a former adjunct professor in the department of landscape architecture and regional planning at The University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Noting that the comprehensive land-use plans of many, if not all, New Hampshire towns call for the preservation of "rural character", Arendt said their actual zoning ordinances, on the other hand, and pulling in the opposite direction. "You need to separate density from lot size," he said. "It's not the same thing."

Rather than see, for example, a 100-acre parcel of buildable land divided up into 50-lots of 2-acres each because that is what the zoning ordinance calls for, Arendt advocates forcing a developer to put aside 50-acres of the best land in conservation easements and design 50-lots that are 1-acre in size on the balance. Then, he said, you have "golf course lots without the golf course. . .small lots with a big view".

Developers will be skeptical, he admitted, but they can be shown that conservation subdivision design will save them a bundle in development costs because they will need fewer miles of roads and utilities and will have to clear less land.

For conservation subdivision design to work, Arendt told his audience, land-use boards have to insist on very detailed site analysis drawings — noting every stone wall, a complete tree inventory, etc. — and then get out and walk the property themselves. "CAD (computer aided design) murders conservation design," he added.

Arendt outlined a four-step process for laying out a subdivision that is conservation designed: 1. Identify all the buildable land you want to preserve, 2. Locate where houses should be built to take maximum advantage of the common space, 3. Draw in the streets to connect the houses, and 4. Draw the lot lines.

Showing a map of Center Center Sandwich, Arendt noted the irony that the prototype New England village would not be possible to recreate today because of zoning ordinances — the lots are too small, the road frontages aren't wide enough, the streets are too narrow and the set-backs are inadequate. "What is immoral about Center Sandwich?," he asked.

Headquartered in Meredith, the Lakes Region Planning Commission is a non-profit, voluntary association of 30-towns who pool their resources to obtain a highly-trained professional staff that provides a wide variety of services. Created in 1968, it is recognized by the state as an official planning commission.

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