Make Martha's Vineyard a more sustainable, resilient, diverse, balanced, and self-sufficient community, preserving the Island’s unique natural, rural, and historical character and creating a better future for Vineyarders and the Island itself. Use the Island and manage its development in ways that are compatible with the long-term sustainability and carrying capacities of our natural resources and community.
Overall Goals
1. Conserve enough of the Vineyard’s distinct ecological regions to retain their biodiversity, to protect the Island’s scenic character, and to support recreational uses.
2. Restore the ecological vibrancy of salt ponds and bays with healthy expanses of eelgrass, sustainable shellfish populations, and varied recreational opportunities.
3. Maintain a community that is economically, culturally, and ethnically diverse, remaining intimately connected to the traditional ways of the Vineyard.
4. Protect the distinct and diverse character of the Island’s six towns, while forging a stronger regional perspective for dealing with Island-wide issues.
5. Stimulate a vital, balanced, local economy that is more self-reliant and more diverse.
6. Produce as much of our essentials, such as food and energy, as we can, and convert our waste into useful products.
7. Sustain our year-round community by addressing housing affordability and the high cost of living.
8. Direct development to town and village areas and limit building in environmentally sensitive areas.
9. Reinforce compact, mixed-use, walkable town and village centers.
10. Ensure that new building is compatible in its scale, siting, and design with its surroundings.
The rest of the Island Plan outlines more specific objectives in each of nine topic areas, as well as 201 specific strategies for achieving them.
Though at first glance it may seem that some of these goals, objectives, and strategies may be in conflict, for the most part they are mutually reinforcing. Achieving greater diversity and balance will make a stronger, more resilient community, economy, and natural environment, better able to withstand whatever surprises come our way, from a global financial crisis to global warming. Resolving apparent conflicts often comes down to making sure we do the right thing in the right place. Protecting more environmentally significant land as open space doesn’t conflict with affordable housing, because that is not where these projects should be built.
An important and exciting principle underlying the Island Plan is that we can not only ensure that future development better responds to community needs, but we can repair many errors of the past, such as by bringing polluted coastal ponds back to health, by restoring fragmented habitat, and by reestablishing scenic beauty.
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