Jack Clarke is director of advocacy for Mass Audubon and chairman of the city of Gloucester Planning Board.

It’s time for Bay State lawmakers to reverse a pattern of dumb growth in Massachusetts and instead allow for clustered housing development as a “matter of right” and so-called conventional development by special permit only.

While legislators sit on their hands regarding zoning reform, conventional subdivisions sprawl across the landscape, separating people from each other, their work and their play.

Locked in a 1950s freeze-frame, state law not only allows but encourages grid subdivisions. What created communities half a century ago strains existing ones today with oversized houses at oversized prices on oversized lots. This leads to the consumption of 40 acres of Massachusetts’ open space a day, traffic congestion and a reduction in home affordability.

Efforts to tame the rules on sprawl are routinely defeated on Beacon Hill by wealthy and well-connected special interests within the building and real-estate industry.

The original purpose of conventional subdivision rules was to allow a developer to lay out a maximum number of roads to accommodate as many houses as the land could bear and law would allow. And the rules still dictate that, once each building lot shows street frontage, local approval must be granted within 130 days as a matter of right. Frustrated planning boards issue permits for these cookie-cutter subdivisions every day. So much for home rule.

In contrast, local boards can permit cluster subdivisions that provide open space and affordable housing. The 1980s version of cluster allows for grouping of houses followed by laying out of roads as the first steps in a design plan. Leftover land is then reserved as open space.

The newest version of cluster is Open Space Residential Design (OSRD). This type of development is based on the New England village-style of neighbors living side-by-side around a common area of open space.

OSRD zoning lets residential subdivisions maximize the amount of quality open space preserved while not reducing the number of houses that can be built. It also allows local officials to negotiate permits for affordable housing and increased open space in exchange for the developer receiving permission to build more market-rate units at a higher density than normal zoning would allow.

A benefit to developers, local officials and residents alike, OSRD is a flexible tool that eliminates permit gridlock and fosters attractive neighborhoods that suit the landscape and turn a profit. It defines smart growth.

Roughly half of Massachusetts’s cities and towns have adopted cluster zoning, with 10 communities opting for OSRD.

Setting Values

The problem, however, is that cluster approvals, including OSRD, are traditionally granted by special permit – a lengthy, cumbersome and complicated process that intimidates property owners, employs too many lawyers and steers developers to the conventional method.

It’s time to reverse this mindless method of subdivision approval and switch to a system of cluster by-right and conventional sprawl by special permit.

To receive a cluster by-right permit, a developer would first have to put aside the most important features of the landscape as conservation areas. Buildable areas would then be defined, with house locations clustered around the open land. Finally, skinny roads would link the subdivision together.

To receive a special permit for a conventional subdivision, as an exception to the state and community’s preferred method of cluster housing, the plan would have to show why a grid is the best of all alternatives; show how it would minimize impact to the environment; and show how mitigation to adverse environmental and financial impacts to the community would be provided.

Two decades ago, Lincoln Conservation Commission Chairman Robert Lemire said that we need to save what needs to be saved and build what needs to be built. Today we need to save differently and build differently.

Land saved should be that which protects the commonwealth’s green infrastructure – our drinking water, wetlands, forests and farms.

Land developed should be that which connects people and is transit-oriented; is linked to libraries, schools and shopping; and is denser than what our suburban nation is generally accustomed to.

There are 5 million acres of land in Massachusetts. One million is protected open space, one million is developed and the rest is up for grabs. How we treat the remaining land will say much to future generations about what we, as a commonwealth, value.