We need a better plan for our future!

The newly approved Barnstable County Regional Policy Plan is long on promises and short on specifics. It offers pages of lofty language about sustainability, resilience, and balanced growth, but when it comes to concrete steps, enforceable standards, or commitments that would actually improve life for Cape Cod residents, the plan simply evaporates. It leans heavily—almost blindly—on housing development as the centerpiece of economic recovery, as if building more units alone could solve the deep structural challenges facing our region. And that raises an urgent question:

Does this plan really meet the needs of residents who want sustainable growth and long-term prosperity? The answer, plainly, is no.

The plan sells a vision of water quality restored, transportation improved, villages strengthened, and a stable year-round economy. But it fails to explain how any of that will happen. It acknowledges enormous problems—worsening nitrogen pollution, coastal vulnerability, an overheated real estate market, and the collapse of the local workforce—but sidesteps the bold actions required to address them. Instead of a roadmap, we are given a brochure.

The RPP’s biggest flaw is its overreliance on housing development as an economic driver. It treats construction—especially multifamily and mixed-use development in designated “growth centers”—as the primary engine for prosperity. This is a fragile and shortsighted strategy. Housing construction alone cannot fix the workforce crisis, cannot restore water quality, cannot stabilize coastal infrastructure, and cannot remake a 21st-century Cape economy. It may grow the tax base in the short term, but it risks fueling sprawl, overwhelming existing infrastructure, and destabilizing the very villages the plan claims to protect.

The Cape’s economy should stand on diverse, resilient sectors—marine science, clean energy, healthcare, sustainable tourism, the arts—not solely on building more units. The RPP’s narrow focus reveals a lack of imagination and a lack of understanding of what residents value and what the region actually needs to thrive.

Residents who want sustainable growth and genuine prosperity will find little in this plan that speaks to them. The RPP asks residents to trust a system that has already not delivered.