Pioneer Valley Planning Commission Valley Vision Toolbox Home

January 25, 2008

Dear Pioneer Valley Planners and Concerned Citizens:

Congratulations on your decision to pursue smart growth planning in your community. The staff, student interns, and volunteers here at the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission have done a lot of work to assemble and provide you with an array of smart growth planning tools that can guide the future management and growth of your own community and the region as a whole. Jane Jacobs, the renowned American city planner/theorist used to tell the following insightful story:

a family I know ... bought an acre in the country on which to build a house. For many years, while they lacked the money to build, they visited the site regularly and picnicked on a knoll, the site’s most attractive feature. They liked so much to visualize themselves as always there, that when they finally built they put the house on the knoll. But then the knoll was gone. Somehow they had not realized they would destroy it and lose it by supplanting it with themselves.
Jane Jacobs

Let us all work together to make sure that we do not destroy our Valley by supplanting it with ourselves.

I love planning and I love the Pioneer Valley; it is undeniably a very special place and one we must work hard to enhance and protect. It has been my honor and my privilege to serve as planner and most recently Director of the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission for the last quarter century. I have seen this region grow and change and I have been blessed with the opportunity to work with many of you and your colleagues, predecessors, friends and co-workers on a variety of exciting and challenging projects. I am truly grateful for all that you do and know full well that it is the work of you and many more like you that will ultimately determine whether the Valley will stay an exceptional place to live, learn, work and play on into the future.

The tools that are collected, explained and presented in this compendium will assist you and your professional and civilian planning colleagues to realize attractive, dynamic and extraordinarily livable cities and towns which taken together are the means to achieving a strong and sustainable region that’s well equipped to navigate the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. I ask you, I ask us all to engage in this important work and if we do I’m confident we’ll plan communities and a region where we’ll all want to be.

Sincerely,
Timoth W. Brennan
Timothy W. Brennan, Executive Director