Bay Daily

The Future in the Balance: Community vs. Sprawl

The next few days may determine the future of Cambridge, Maryland. 

The Cambridge City Council will decide, perhaps as early as Monday, whether to chart a new course for the Eastern Shore town's economic development away from strip malls, chain restaurants, and sprawl, and toward a healthy downtown.

The city’s planning commission has offered a new blueprint for the city, a Comprehensive Plan that proposes to revitalize Cambridge from the inside. The plan envisions micro-financing loans to encourage downtown entrepreneurs, as well as training and mentoring; development along the downtown waterfront; improved streets and intersections for bikers and walkers; and a "green belt" around the city beyond which no development will be allowed, as well as other measures.

A different sort of populist revolt; Cambridge demands smart growth

Progress toward a cleaner Chesapeake Bay can’t always be measured in nutrient loads alone.  In Cambridge, MD positive change seems to have occurred at a certain boiling point of citizen upset.
 
Cambridge is a small Eastern Shore city on the banks of the Choptank River that gained notoriety only a few years ago for approving a massive resort development near the fragile Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. Now the city is becoming a beacon of green civic consciousness.

"It’s almost like a 180-degree change," says Bill Giese, a community activist.