A weeklong planning event could produce a new Baltimore County zoning classification that residents of its eastern shores said would protect their bucolic life from increasing development pressures.

County planners are organizing a seven-day “charette” scheduled for September to determine whether a new coastal zoning category could protect the lower Back River Neck Peninsula?s rural character, officials said. With most of the waterfront protected Chesapeake Bay wetlands ? meaning major new construction is unlikely ? community activist Ron Belbot said the process would target infill development.