MACC
The Massachusetts Association of Conservation Commissioners provides news about land conservation and applicable laws. More importantly, MACC provides comprehensive training in land protection at workshops held throughout the Commonwealth.

The Trustees of Reservations is the nation's oldest private, statewide conservation and preservation
organization. Since 1891, it has protected over 33,000 acres of land in Massachusetts, including 82 public reservations representing many of the state's most scenic, ecologically rich, and historically important landscapes.

The Institute for Cultural Landscape Studies at Harvard University was founded in 1997. It works in the overlap among three interrelated fields:historic preservation, natural areas conservation, and land use planning.

The E. F. Schumacher Society, named after the author of Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered, is an educational non-profit organization founded in 1980. Its programs demonstrate that both social and environmental sustainability can be achieved by applying the values of human-scale communities and respect for the natural environment to economic issues.

The Trust for Public Land is a national, nonprofit land conservation that conserves land for people to enjoy as parks, gardens, natural areas and open space. As a problem-solving organization, TPL works in partnership with government, business, and community groups to: acquire and preserve open space to serve human needs; share knowledge of nonprofit land acquisition; and pioneer methods of land conservation and environmentally sound land.

The Conservation Law Foundation is the largest regional environmental advocacy organization in the United States. We're based in New England, where our 25 professional advocates -- attorneys, scientists, economists, policy experts -- work on the most significant threats to the natural environment of the region, and to the health of its residents.

The Executive Office of Environmental Affairs (EOEA) coordinates the work of all state-level environmental agencies and initiatives in Massachusetts.

The Educational Programs page from the Massachusetts Fish & Wildlife Service includes activities for all ages. It including a favorite of NRTB President Kitty Doherty: BOW, Becoming an Outdoors Woman.

River Network's mission is to help people organize to protect and restore rivers and watersheds.

The home page of James Hayes-Bohanan, an NRTB board member and geography professor at Bridgewater State College, has a lot of local and global information about land use and related issues.

Southeastern Regional Planning and Economic Development District (SRPEDD) are involved with planning for transportation, economic development, environmental protection and land use. SRPEDD also runs the Southeastern Massachusetts Data Center.

Conservation Subdivision Design: A Market-Friendly Approach to Local Environmental Protection
By Leonard Gilroy, Research Fellow, Urban Futures Program / Reason Public Policy Institute
Some new and unique residential subdivisions in the Atlanta metro area are offering what many home buyers would consider as the best of both worlds -- modern suburban homes surrounded by woods, wetlands, and other undisturbed green spaces. More...

Sickening Sprawl
A new report says people who live in cities that are spread out are more prone to health problems like asthma, high-blood pressure and arthritis. Hear about the links between where we live and how we feel.

This topic was a feature on the NPR program, "The Connection."  You can hear an audio stream of this program on the web, at any time, here.

Solving Sprawl is a new book from Island Press that details 35 diverse smart-growth stories from around the United States and celebrates those who are leading the way in solving sprawl -- state and local officials who have embraced new forms of development, corporations who are choosing to redevelop abandoned city properties rather than build new corporate campuses on undeveloped land, faith-based organizations that have been instrumental in redeveloping inner-city neighborhoods, visionary architects and planners who are showing how to design communities and regions that solve sprawl.

Smart Growth Strategies for New England is provided by the Region I Office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The program fosters sustainable economic growth in the region that does not contribute to sprawl. It includes smart growth training programs, grants, federal partnerships and other activities.

Smart Growth America is a leader in the effort to educate citizens and government officials about the problems being created by suburban sprawl.

The Bridgewater Community Profile from the Massachusetts Department of State will help to familiarize you with open space, budget, cultural, and other important aspects of Bridgewater.

The Bridgewater Home Page provides an orientation to the community and some of the other organizations at work here.