This chapter encourages appropriate and sustainable development; promotes public health, safety, convenience and general welfare; designates and regulates the location and use of buildings, structures and land for residential, agricultural, commercial, and industrial uses in appropriate places and for those purposes divides the Town into districts of such number, shape and area as may be deemed best suited to carry out these regulations and provide for their enforcement. The objectives of this chapter are to: provide adequate open space for light and air; provide desired levels of population density; secure safety from fire, flood, panic and other dangers; provide effective utilization of land; provide adequate community and public utility facilities; provide workable relationships of land uses to the transportation system; prevent congestion, preserve the natural beauty and ecology of watercourses, bodies of water, wetlands and natural areas of value to the community; and conserve and stabilize the value of property.

The regulations contained in this chapter have been made in accordance with the Comprehensive Plan and neighborhood studies, and with reasonable consideration of the character of each district and its suitability for particular uses.