Land Use 2025 - RhodeMap RI

• Lack of required landscaping and buffer requirements for streetscapes and forscreening parking and unsightly areas, and between different types of uses.• Height restrictions prohibiting uses taller than 35 feet in much of the urban area.• Deteriorating public infrastructure and the lack of public sewer service inapproximately half the urban areas.Rural AreasSome Rhode Island communities lack practical plans for alternatives to sprawldevelopment. Among the constraints are:• Difficulty in coordinating town-wide and regional open space preservation effortsgiven the many State, regional, local, and nonprofit entities involved.• Pressures on land use decision-makers to increase the property tax base and tofund local services, inparticular, education.• Lack of infrastructure tosupport density/intensity incenters and neighborhoods.• Lack of diversity (intypology and mixture) inexisting and planned buildingstock.• Need for permanentprotection for priority naturalareas.• Danger of loss of agricultural lands as well as loss of overall rural, open spacecharacter and unfragmented forest reserves.• Segregation, homogeneity, and isolation of land uses and population.Matching Development to Capacity of ResourcesIn order to properly match land development with the capacity of land and waterresources and to protect ground and surface water quality and quantity and aquatichabitat, decisions concerning future development should always take into account severalimportant issues:• limiting the amount of impervious surface area• adequacy of stormwater management and conservation practices• adequacy of wetland and riparian buffers3-4 Land Use 2025: Rhode Island State Land Use Policies and Plan (April 2006)