Communities and Consequences

Today the Chamber of Commerce and CATCH hosted a talk by Peter Francese, author of Communities and Consequences: The Unbalancing of New Hampshire's Human Ecology, & What We Can Do About It. This is a very important new book--if you care about the state you live in, you should read it and talk it over with friends and family.

New Hampshire is graying, young people are leaving in droves, and communities are actively discouraging working class families (and families with children) from moving in. The economy will spiral downward without them, Francese argues, but New Hampshire towns persist in the illusion that taxes and even crime will rise if we let "them" live too close to us--even when they are us. All of New Hampshire's signature issues figure into this debate: taxes, local control, open space, land use, school budgets, and sprawl. And Francese handles this complex material effortlessly, and in just 100 pages.

He even has a picture of a Hopkinton town meeting on the cover. How can you resist?