The Community Preservation Act (CPA) is the result of nearly two
decades of hard work devoted to passing legislation that would
give all 351 Massachusetts cities and towns a tool to preserve
their most unique natural, community, and built features in the
face of rapid growth and development. While the Commonwealth
enjoyed healthy growth in the period following World War II,
beginning in the 1980s, communities long blessed with a
beneficial mix of farms and forests, historic town centers, and
compact patterns of development began to find that they no
longer recognized themselves. Some communities wanted to protect
working farms, others desired to protect historic buildings from
being razed, and still others strived to provide affordable
housing to enable the next generation of long-time residents to
remain close to home. The concept of a statewide enabling
authority to preserve community character had its original
inspiration in the Nantucket Islands Land Bank, the first
program of its kind in the United State