Peterborough has embarked on an exciting project this fall: creating a place in Peterborough where neighborhoods in the style of the town we already have and love can be built. We want a place where children can trick or treat without having to be driven somewhere, where residents can walk to buy a quart of milk or a cup of coffee, where many different kinds of housing can co-exist. We are trying to lay the foundation for walkable neighborhoods.

The New Villages Project is a grant-funded effort to rewrite the zoning for Peterborough so that this can happen. It comes as a surprise to many residents that our current zoning prohibits the creation of new neighborhoods that look like Pine Street, High Street, and Winter Street. Under current zoning new comfortable, walkable neighborhoods cannot be built. Currently the only places where village development can happen is the Traditional Neighborhood Overlay District, which covers a small part of the residential neighborhoods near the Town House, and West Peterborough. This project is not a building project. It is a citizen-led effort to make changes in zoning. Changes which we believe will lead to walkable neighborhood construction and the creation of more, varied housing choices in Peterborough. This project is not focused exclusively on affordable housing, but the committee believes that more choices will ultimately create more affordability.

Many people now want to live in the kind of small town Peterborough exemplifies and we have room to grow to accommodate more residents, but we cannot grow into more walkable neighborhoods without a change in our zoning ordinance. We cannot be sure that changing our zoning ordinances will cause those neighborhoods to be built, but we know that not changing our ordinances will prevent their creation.

The committee’s research shows that the demographic trends at play nationally and in New Hampshire support the creation of more walkable neighborhoods. Older people who are downsizing want walkability, and New Hampshire (and Peterborough) becomes grayer by the year. Young people want walkability, and they are no longer as interested in the big house on the big lot in the country.

There are economic drivers of this endeavor as well. When we spread residential development out over the countryside, we increase the town’s costs to provide services exponentially. Repaving roads which serve only a few, spread-out houses costs taxpayers money that might be better spent on more generally-used services.

A big question is where would this happen? The committee is not yet certain, but it would be somewhere that neither the Traditional Neighborhood Overlay District nor the West Peterborough district encompasses. It must be somewhere that town water and sewer services can be extended. Potential locations will be based on public feedback and the criteria we develop from that feedback.

As part of this New Villages Project the committee has held two evening meetings to talk to residents, as well as visiting employers and having people respond to a short survey. What we hear is that Peterborough residents (and people who would like to be Peterborough residents) support the idea of growth in the form of walkable neighborhoods. They have told us they want those neighborhoods to look like Peterborough, and to have more than one kind of housing available.

We will continue to hold public forums and workshops to discuss our ideas as they firm up and to incorporate comments and suggestions from the public. The next two meetings on this exciting topic are Nov. 10 at 6:30 p.m. in the Town House and Nov. 17 at 1:30 p.m. in the Town House.

Members of the New Villages Project committee are Ivy Vann, Brook Charron, Sue Chollet, Bob Holt, Jack Belletete, John Morison, Mary Lou O’Neil, Richard Scheinblum, Cy Gregg and Jaime Conley.