Understand the Mississippi hill country landscape and guide growth responsibly within it by growing compactly and using natural features to establish town boundaries. Historic Oxford was built on a hill, safely protected from flooding, allowing the creeks and swales to carry stormwater naturally away from town to the larger creeks and rivers in the surrounding landscape. Main roads leading to the countryside were usually on the ridges, giving access for farming on the hillsides and the valleys below. During recent years, this historic pattern has not been continued.
New development is scattered.
Today Oxford's boundary is invisible, consisting of lines on a map unrelated to the larger landscape. The Oxford Town Plan establishes natural boundaries for future growth. The hill country with its numerous small watersheds allows incremental growth until the natural boundaries of the larger watersheds are reached. Development in this way conserves natural land resources and conserves public funds that must be invested in infrastructure to support private development. Oxford's natural boundaries for future growth will be implemented by using natural boundaries as a primary way of defining future expansion by annexation.