Challenges and Opportunities: Over the past generation, Martha's Vineyard, along with Nantucket, has experienced the highest growth rate in the Commonwealth. Strong planning efforts by the Martha's Vineyard Commission and the six Island towns have, to a great extent, succeeded in preserving the Vineyard’s community character, natural environment, and quality of life.

However, the Island’s community make-up, character and environment continue to face tremendous development pressure for growth and change. The Island population could grow by close to 50% if all “available” land were developed under existing zoning, and could more than triple if all seasonal houses became occupied year-round.

The Vineyard is facing many challenges that could seriously impact the Island.

• The skyrocketing cost of housing is making it difficult to maintain our diverse community and to house essential workers.
• Excessive nitrogen loading in coastal ponds threatens water quality; this could affect the environment, our quality of life, and the economy (notably tourism and commercial fishing).
  
• Traffic congestion at several intersections is approaching thresholds that could result in dramatic deterioration of conditions with only modest additional traffic.
• Development continues to sprawl into rural areas and along rural roads, undermining scenic values, consuming valuable open space, and damaging environmentally sensitive and highly significant natural resources, all of which are vital to the strength of our visitor-based economy.
  

Vineyarders can work together to face the challenges that threaten the aspects of the Vineyard that we treasure. But we can also seize the opportunity to make the Vineyard’s economy, ecology, community, and land better than they are today.

Some Questions to Address: Here are some of the questions that we hope to address in this planning process.

• Where do we want the Vineyard it to be in five, twenty, and fifty years from now, and what do we have to do now to get there?
• What will happen if the Vineyard continues to grow and change as it is has over the past generation?
  
• Can we better concentrate development in compact, mixed-use neighborhoods and better preserve rural and other natural areas?
  
• What can we do to promote a sustainable economy with good jobs?
• Can we ensure that there will be housing to meet the needs of all Vineyarders?
• How can we ensure that people traveling around the Island will be able to get where they want to go safely and with little congestion?
  
• How can we preserve the Island’s character and environment?
• How can we make the Vineyard more energy independent?
• Of the one third of the Island that is “available” land, what portion should be developed or conserved as open space?
• Should we channel development into certain areas? If so, where and how?
• What are the concrete actions that we will need to take to achieve the community’s vision for the future?
  

 
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