Tag: open space

Can we have both open space and affordable housing?

Seth Rolbein’s latest post, Buying open space, pushing big-lot zoning, provides a straightforward discussion of the need and possibilities for affordable housing on Cape Cod. The loss of affordable housing has transformed daily life, including hollowing out communities, increasing traffic, and endangering health.

Seth shows clearly how the loss of affordable housing was not due to protecting open space for conservation and recreation. Instead, decades of zoning battles that emphasized single-family homes and ever-larger lot sizes drove up costs “and ignored alternatives like more density in well-selected places.”

Open Space Survey

The Town of Wellfleet is in the process of updating its Open Space and Recreation Five-Year Plan and needs your input.

WCT supports the Wellfleet Open Space Committee in getting wide distribution of the new survey. It takes about 10 minutes to complete. All responses are anonymous.

The open space survey will identify needs and concerns of the community regarding open space and recreation resources. Having an approved OSR Plan is required to qualify for State reimbursement programs, which offset acquisition costs so that these important community assets can be protected in perpetuity.

You can help:

  1. Take the survey by February 13, 2023.
  2. Ask others in your household to complete it.
  3. Send it to neighbors, friends, renters, regular summer visitors, contractors/handy-people, etc. – anyone who might not be on one of the “official” Town lists.

If you’ve already responded to the survey, please pass it on to someone else who might be interested in Wellfleet’s future.

New open space map

Thanks to the hard work of Mary Doucette, Year 22 Member of AmeriCorps Cape Cod, we now have a new open space map for Wellfleet.

The map is in portable document format (pdf), meaning that it should be easily viewable on most computers, tablets, and phones. At 900 dots per inch, the detail is amazing, showing roads, buildings, ponds, beaches, and more.

It displays lands managed by the Cape Cod National Seashore, Wellfleet Conservation Trust (both Trust lands and conservation restrictions), the Town Conservation Commission, Mass Audubon, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

It’s worth noting , as you can see on the map, that many of the lands abut others, making possible extended walking trails and unrestricted views.

You can see a thumbnail version of the map on the home page of the Wellfleet Conservation Trust site. If you click on that small map, you should be able to see the much more detailed pdf version. That one can be viewed online, zooming in or out, or downloaded for more detailed offline study or printing.