For a long time it seemed like the Island was a battleground of sorts. On one side were big, deep-pocketed developers who stood to make millions by taking advantage of relatively cheap prices and abundant open land. On the other side stood Island planners and conservationists who were scrambling to impose tougher zoning rules and tie up land to protect farmland, water quality and the rural character of the Island.

Those were the boom years of development on the Vineyard, still fresh in the memories of many who live here and vividly represented in an animated video recently developed by Chris Seidel, a cartographer with the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, that was posted on the Gazette website last week.

That period ran for about thirty years, roughly from the late 1970s until the late 1990s. At first the trend for developers was to take large tracts of land and carve them into subdivisions. Many of the residential neighborhoods on the Vineyard today are the legacy of those years. In Edgartown, a huge boom in development resulting in hundreds of new house lots off the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road and in Katama coincided with a six-year period during the 1980s when the town had withdrawn from the MVC. Later, development became more nuanced and planned communities grew more upscale.

The past fifteen years or so have seen the pace of building slow and change complexion. Most recently, commission planners say, there has been a trend toward individual buyers scooping up large lots to build megahouses or compounds. While this trend arguably preserves more open land, it is troubling for other reasons, reflecting as it does an increasing wealth gap on the Island. There are now many large houses, yet not enough places for people of ordinary means to live.

Today a gratifying forty-one per cent of the Vineyard is protected as conservation land. Still, nearly one-third of the Island has the potential to be built upon, according to the commission. The Gazette reported last week there are 7,820 acres of vacant parcels available for development and another 8,892 acres that are already partially developed, but could be further subdivided under current zoning laws.

Even at the current pace of development, the Island would not be fully developed until 2089, the MVC models show, but once again its new animated digital map — showing potential new development in blood red — offers a chilling view of what could theoretically happen under current zoning laws.

History has already shown that while development on the Island has not necessarily followed predictable patterns, it has loosely followed the economic boom and bust cycles of the country. And though the development frenzy of the 1980s is unlikely to be repeated for a variety of reasons, including the creation of both the MVC and the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank, the battle to ensure that the Island doesn’t lose the elements that make it special is not over.

The next frontier will not be simply fighting for more conservation land, though there is surely more acreage that deserves to be protected. Instead it will be looking at zoning and development in new ways, coming up with new models of land use planning that enable people to enjoy the peace, natural beauty and privacy that has made the Vineyard a cherished destination for generations, but that also provides affordable housing for the many people who make it possible for others to vacation here.

In this battle, we should all be on the same side.