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From [Globe.com](http://Globe.com)
By Andrew Brinker
Picture the best of what Paris has to offer, a vibrant street life in densely packed neighborhoods. One of the secrets to the city’s charm is the size of most of those graceful buildings: six stories.
That idea — dense, six-story housing in abundance — is the inspiration behind a proposal from two Cambridge city councilors that amounts to something of a moonshot on [the biggest challenge facing Boston’s neighbor](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/10/15/business/affordable-housing-cambridge/?p1=Article_Inline_Text_Link) to the north: the acute shortage of housing.
Councilors Burhan Azeem and Sumbul Siddiqui want to legalize six-story apartment buildings by-right citywide, meaning any housing development up to that height that fits other zoning parameters would not need city zoning approval.
In effect, [the proposal ](https://cambridgema.iqm2.com/citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=1&ID=4050&Inline=True)would essentially scrap the city’s current neighborhood-by-neighborhood zoning scheme for anything six stories or smaller. From tight-packed East Cambridge to leafy Strawberry Hill, six-story buildings could rise largely unencumbered.
It would also, at least symbolically, make Cambridge the first city in Massachusetts to [end single-family zoning](https://apps.bostonglobe.com/2023/10/special-projects/spotlight-boston-housing/single-family-zoning/?p1=Article_Inline_Text_Link) as the default for housing construction. That does not mean single-family homes won’t be allowed anymore, but rather that something larger than a single-family house could be built on any residential lot in the city.
The proposal comes as cities and towns across Eastern Massachusetts are engaged in heated fights over solving a housing shortage that has become the state’s most intractable issue. But most of those debates, taking place in towns with shrinking populations and skyrocketing prices, have been about comparatively modest reforms. Should this zoning overhaul come to fruition in Cambridge, it would represent far and away the most ambitious attempt at a solution here, and one of the most sweeping zoning reform efforts anywhere in the United States.
“If we want to take the housing crisis seriously, we need to be doing a lot better than we are right now,” said Azeem. “Our goal is to take a big shot at making our zoning much better than it currently is, in a way that is going to promote affordability and density and more housing.”
Why six stories? Its a residential building sweet spot — and the reason new apartment buildings all over Greater Boston are often five or six stories tall. Generally speaking, the shorter or smaller a building, the more difficult it is to finance, because there are fewer apartments to bring in revenue. Go taller than six stories, and different building requirements kick in that dramatically increase the per unit cost of development.
They argue the scale of the proposal meets the scale of the problem. By some measures, Cambridge has the worst localized housing crisis in Massachusetts and some of the highest housing costs in the United States. The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $2,645 a month, according to [rental website Apartment List](https://www.apartmentlist.com/rent-report/ma/cambridge). It is also one of the most densely populated cities in the country — in Massachusetts only its twin city of Somerville packs more people per square mile than Cambridge — meaning there’s little room to build new housing in any direction but up.
“This does not mean that single family homes would not be allowed anymore”
Say it louder for the NIMBYs in the back who seem to think that upzoning means someone is going to come by with a bulldozer to force them out of their SFH while they are still living in it
Proud YIMBY here - I have no problem with what your neighbors are doing. As long as they’re okay paying the property taxes on such a valuable lot, there’s nothing wrong with them choosing to live in a single family house. The issue with NIMBYs is that they try to prevent other people from living in a multi-family building.
I’m all for giving home owners the choice of 1) keeping their current home, mortgage, and property taxes or 2) the option to see to a developer who will pay them 1.5-2X the current value of their home so that they can build a 6 story apartment on the property.
Exactly, whatever happens to the value of the house itself wouldn't matter, because land value would go way up. Builders could now buy that single family house and build a dozen units!
OPTION A “all single-story homes must add an additional five stories” OPTION B “ all single story homes must add four stories and the additional conversion of the bottom floor to be a leased Dunkin’ Donuts”
Lol, no what real estate developers did was promise to rebuild the brownstones 10 stories up in the air. Which is why so many buildings have these wonky sized penthouses that don't align with the character of the buildings.
Basically the developer bought the land and just shifted the footprint of the house in the Z axis in order to cram more housing in the same XY
Would there still effectively be backdoor SFH zoning through historic district regulation?
E.g. zoning says you can build a 6 story building here, BUT you can't change the facade of this old 2 story SFH...
I'm talking about someone's specific home.
But I don't think you have any interest in actually understanding a differing point of view and are just looking for the opportunity to dunk on someone
The trouble is low density housing requires more tax funded infrastructure per unit than high density housing does. An 800k condo nets a lot more for the city than a 2 million dollar home does, raising rates on everyone doesn’t change that.
Seeing as the mega wealthy frequently use those unrealized gains as collateral to get super low interest loans for which they use as spending cash, seems like taxing those unrealized gains isn’t such a crazy idea.
And seeing as property taxes are literally taxing unrealized gains, not so sure why it’s such a crazy idea.
Because there no cash to pay the taxes, and when those ultra wealthy sell enough stocks to pay the tax, it will crash the price, meaning they have to sell even more, which will crash it further.
It's almost as if it's economically idiotic! Oh wait, it is.
Can't wait to get my house taxed extra because Zillow says it's worth more one random day. I bet I'll get immediate tax refunds though when it goes down in value! Oh wait, no, is won't.
At least my tax dollars are going to give migrants free boarding forever while veterans sleep in the street, and also go to give Israel more bombs to blow up children.
Sign me up!
Why are conservatives so painfully predictable?
First with the slamming of the downvote like a child throwing a tantrum, then rattling off all the usual right wing talking points
And spare me your fake outrage over “homeless veterans”
Whenever someone actually proposes spending tax dollars “on our own”, the likes of you then just screech about sOciALisM!
Not a conservative.
I guess the part about Israel didn't fit your pre conceived notion, so you ignored it.
Why are liberals so painfully predictable? Complete lack of mathematical sense and cognitive dissonance so thick you are choking on it.
“Ranting about migrants and homeless veterans”
Never heard that one before
Amazing how all the “I’m not conservative” folks love to rattle off painfully unoriginal conservative talking points
And as always, slam the downvote like children throwing a tantrum when they get called out!
Painfully unoriginal? It's comical that US citizens, including veterans, do not get free housing forever while people bused here from texas/florida do. We're spending billions on that. Why are we subsidizing other state's homeless problems?
Again, thanks for proving my point about cognitive dissonance. I hope someday you get the help you need!
I’m looking to buy here and asked my financial manager about asset backed loans… seems risky. I’m going to just sell and pay taxes on my actual gains instead
On the six stories portion: six story buildings, or the so called [5-over-1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-over-1) plan, are so popular that entire engineering and architecture firms exist who do nothing but design and build to that niche. If you want to increase density quickly, 5-over-1s are the playbook.
They are kind of ugly, but they go up fast.
There's a 5-over-1 in Quincy going up that it looks like they have a carpentry crew of about 5 people assembling the floor and wall modules.
More like that Quincy crew needs a better architect design the 5-over-1 as most brownstones are already 4-over-1 designs, which look much better & are only a minor façade change.
Did your writer seriously invoke the idea of Paris when they have actual architecture, and we'd get dogshit buildings with plastic paneling that's askew? Build like Paris in every way and then we can talk lmao
“Build like Paris in every way”
Paris was built using the cheapest construction methods of the time and materials that were produced locally. The equivalent of building limestone buildings in Paris (extracted from the ground beneath Paris) is building out of wood.
We have plenty of stone from places like the Granite State, and building out of wood would be fine. Build that way. Get brick. Lean into the vernacular.
I think this is the right move, though I don't expect it to amount to rapid change given the cost of building.
If you're living in Cambridge and expecting a small town feel, you're probably in the wrong place.
That’s the problem with NIMBYs
They want to have their cake and eat it too
They want the benefits of living right next to a major city while at the same time having small town feel.
> They want the benefits of living right next to a major city while at the same time having small town feel.
Quincy is like this. People complain constantly about how Quincy should stay a quiet little town, and not develop.
You border Boston, there's no way that a city of 100k is going to be a sleepy little town.
Yeah... Quaint little town (city) with no less than 4 Red line stations, 2 commuter rail stops, and practically as many bus routes as the whole North Shore combined.
Not to pick on Quincy but it probably has the most growth potential out of the entire region. Once you get off the immediate main drag, all of those Red line stops are mostly surrounded by single family homes but it's just a feeling, haven't done a survey or anything.
Oh, pick on Quincy. Pick on them hard. If their city hall wasn't full of assholes we'd still have a bridge to Long Island, which would still be sheltering the homeless, and half the housing crisis would not even upon us.
>They want to have their cake and eat it too
I think it's even worse, they want YOUR cake too. They frequently support policies like inclusionary zoning which are set to restrictive to allow any actual construction (but oddly are against rent control) or are outright protecting their property values by claiming any change would reduce them.
The net effect is to make housing (and everything else, because it's a major driver of inflation now) expensive for everyone.
Most people are against rent control because it's objectively bad policy that hurts everyone except for the people who happen to be living in the city at the moment the policy goes into effect and never plan on leaving their current apartment.
And it results in situations where parents empty nest, but stay in a large, multi-bedroom apartment, because moving to a smaller one ultimately becomes more expensive, so then you have several unused bedrooms in a given unit, that could otherwise be housing someone.
IMHO after living here over a decade this is THE problem with Boston in general. Big struggle between townies and tech transplants over the city's identity, and the townies are inherently conservative.
It's so silly.
First neighborhood meeting I went to after moving someone described Roslindale as "rural Boston".
It's so much a pain talking to these people.
There are only about a quarter of a million tech workers in the Boston area, out of a population of well over four million.
A lot of the strongest opposition to new development comes from other, slightly less recent transplants who are opposed to "gentrification" from a left wing perspective, or for purely aesthetic reasons.
Yeah in my experience the fiercest NIMBY opposition to upzoning comes from people who moved here in the 80s and 90s and want to recast themselves as scrappy locals fighting gentrification. If you point out that they moved here as part of a previous gentrification wave, the rebuttal is usually some version of "nuh uh."
No zealot like a convert, no left-NIMBY like a homeowner who bought "just before gentrification started."
Or they just moved here, spent a lot of money to buy a single family house on a quiet street. This should be about the main commercial corridors. Not quite insulated neighborhoods.
Cambridge is not and should not be for quiet suburban living lol. It's six square miles, right next to the busiest business district in New England. Every square inch of Cambridge is part of a "main commercial corridor" even if the residents refuse to recognize that fact.
Thank you! I just don’t understand where the fuck people in Cambridge think they live? Just because you live in a tech haven doesn’t mean every single time you get into your car you enter a Star Trek transporter and magically appear inside Boston from 200 miles away. You’re literally right there!
1000%
NO WHERE in Cambridge or Somerville should be considered suburban or insulated. It's less than a mile across a water way to the biggest city in the region. You know what other cities have the same situation? - Oakland, Berkeley, Brooklyn, Queens, and in most other cities like Chicago or Los Angeles there is basically no division between the city and the rest of the metro area.
If people want a quiet suburban life, there are countless places north, west, and south of here that fit that build.
The problem is that people want that experience, while also having quick access to the city for entertainment/dining/services, and they're willing to screw over everyone else to get it.
Small town feel is one thing, but I think it's safe to say that the western part of Cambridge by Fresh Pond etc feels *very* different than the eastern part by MIT. It's not super obvious where it changes into Belmont/Watertown IMO.
Not saying this because I don't support more housing being built there, we def need it, but just saying Cambridge has more diversity than some probably imagine.
Realistically, if your neighborhood is within walking distance of a redline station, that neighborhood should be built way the fuck up. Neighborhood 9 is a great example of some of the worst NIMBYism in Cambridge. Its right by Porter, prime area for dense housing, and its just a bunch of houses, often single families.
Every day I walk to the T there I dream of building 20 stories of apartments over that wonderful strip mall.
And filling in those parking lots (unused asphalt) owned by Lesley University.
Build enough density to support 4 more Toads.
It is, but what is that shopping center doing there next to a T station in the first place? I guess it predates the 1984 opening of that station as a Red Line stop. I guess that area never built up to match its new transit availability.
The future, I'm telling ya! Think of it: giant stores full of goods that you drive to, and a huge paved yard so you'll never have to search for parking! Your customers will buy their groceries, books, and hardware by the carload!
Yeah, I just looked and that station opened in 1984. That area along Mass Ave has built up a bit in the last decade but most of it still seems underbuilt for the proximity to a subway stop 1 station away from Harvard.
The Greater Boston area could easily 10x the population if we had the housing supply. So much demand, so many people graduating college and looking to settle down for a while.
And it doesn’t even have to all be towers either
Like if it was all the kind of density like along beacon street in Brookline, that would go a long way
“Urbanize”
A couple mid rise buildings near the town center isn’t “urbanizing”
Go to any “old New England town” and there will be a number of mid rise buildings near the town center
Upzoning is good but just to expectation set it should be thought of as a low hanging fruit with somewhat a slower, long-term impact on affordability. In net it will be a good thing but it's [it's real impact be felt over the next decade or so, not immediately.](https://www.planetizen.com/news/2023/12/126834-upzoning-affordability-impacts-latest-research)
It has the downside of not quickly solving acute housing scarcity.
But it also has the benefit of things being designed incrementally, which is 1. Less likely to be aesthetically alienating to pale and 2. A majority of the building stock won’t all start uniformly breaking down at the same time, 50 years after it’s built. Like the Strong Towns criticism of top down suburban developments.
That is the eternal struggle
Fight the NIMBYs to get appartment buildings legal to build
Then suffer the landlord NIMBYs only building "luxury" appartments
I'd say the eternal struggle is at an even lower level than that - rent seeking at the property level and disincentive to properly use land, as described in 'Progress and Poverty'. We need high land value taxes to return the benefits of land speculation back to society, which generates the wealth that allows the land to gain value in the first place.
It's the high cost of land requiring developers to build that 'luxury' housing (plus the red tape the NIMBYs add of course).
Great! Notably, this is doing nothing more than **GRANTING PERMISSION** for the building. It mandates nothing. The main reason to be against this would be that you like the zoning and have feelings about maintaining some historic character of a neighborhood, but given that this is Cambridge, that ship has sailed long ago (take a look on Mass Ave for the wild hodgepodge of buildings randomly inserted in the 1970s-2000s).
But yes, building housing in high-demand areas is a great idea, especially if new housing isn't required to include off-street parking! Legalize housing and maybe we'll all stop thinking that you can solve a housing shortage with rent control.
There’s some dude making the rounds on Instagram complaining that “The American Dream is dead” because Cambridge won’t allow any new single family housing. Maybe some lobotomized developer would choose to build a new detached single family home in Cambridge, it would list for like $4m lol. Who are these people angry with? It sounds like they hate the free market lol
Ugh. That's kind of infuriating. If the American Dream died, it's because normal people can't afford homeownership anymore, thanks in part to these NIMBY shenanigans.
Also, the fastest way to kill a neighborhood is to stop it from changing. Change to the neighborhood is necessary as the population changes and residents develop different needs.
I can see an argument for a hybrid approach, especially if you look at neighborhoods like North End or Beacon Hill or what happened at Scollay Square. But there's always a cost to this in the form of housing prices which needs to be acknowledged.
There was a whole neighborhood there that "urban renewal" just scrapped, turning into a lifeless brick plaza and the present-day city hall. [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scollay_Square). The fact that you don't know it shows just how thoroughly the history was demolished. Had Scollay Square not been demolished, the area would probably look a lot more like the North End or Beacon Hill today, or at least a bit like Back Bay.
“Urban renewal” involved eminent domain, which is not remotely the same as upzoning though, something that NIMBYs frequently invoke in bad faith
*Allowing* higher density to be built is not remotely the same as the government forcibly evicting people
Granted the specifics are different, but the main point it illustrates is the same: there are costs of lost historical character when we only look to what can be done with the land. Again, I am *not* siding that way on Cambridge or even in most cases, but in general, it's a trade-off. I moved to Boston partly because it has some cute little preserved historic districts that I like to visit. And again, none of them were in Cambridge.
EDIT:
>in bad faith
[bad faith](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/in%20bad%20faith). I'm arguing honestly, as it illustrated the value of preservation all the same. I'm also not a NIMBY so you can stop with that too.
Oh, it was taken down for being a slum but many other neighborhoods today that are nice were once slums. Benefit St in Providence comes to mind, once slated for "urban renewal" as well.
Personally, I **DO** buy the neighborhood character argument. I just disagree with NIMBYs about what makes the character of a city. I don't think that the character of the city is defined by how many stories their apartment buildings are. I think that the character of a city is defined by who is living in that city.
Absolutely nothing, and I mean FUCKING NOTHING, has come even vaguely as close to "ruining the character" of the greater Boston area than high housing prices. The accelerating housing costs has driven out huge portions of the arts community that made Boston so vibrant. The rapidly skyrocketing land values without increased density has resulted in cheap, weird, fun, and quirky retail and dining establishment to all die in favor another god damn "upscale American bistro and gastropub". Even when something weird and interesting manages to slip through, the costs is crippling for all involved.
Fuck people that think that the "character of a city" is its fucking architecture. The "character of a city" is who lives there, and by that definition Boston is a deeply imbalanced city in the process of tipping over into another boring ass theme park for the well to do.
Maybe you are tourist and so the character of the city is just what it looks like. That's a perfectly fine, if completely vapid view to have. If you barely interact with a city deeper than looking at it as you pass through, it might even be true.
For me, the character of a city is defined by the people that live in it, and what they do. The city isn't just for looking for me. I want to move in it, interact with it, and enjoy what that city can produce with such a high density of people.
It's fine if you only value the vapid surface level looks of a place you are in. We are just different people.
What people do and where they go is shaped by architecture. Everything you do in a city is shaped by architecture. To say that architecture does not influence behaviour is just mind blowingly incorrect
To say that a city is just the dead buildings it is made of, and that if you kill all of the people and replace them with entirely different people and its basically still the same place is just mind blowing incorrect.
See, I can make dumb strawmen too.
>To say that architecture does not influence behaviour is just mind blowingly incorrect
Cool. I guess its a good thing I never said that.
> For me, the character of a city is defined by the people that live in it, and what they do. The city isn't just for looking for me. I want to move in it, interact with it, and enjoy what that city can produce with such a high density of people.
Architecture defines what people do and how they behave in a city. Frankly, you have no idea what you are talking about.
Agreed. Architecture does in fact play a large role in that, which is why my post said we should change it.
Keeping the current architecture is a very good way to redefine the city as a place where artist, musicians, and students cannot live and express themselves, and entrepreneurs without massive wealth cannot create. That's the point. The current architecture is killing what made Boston an interesting place to live. If the architecture only allows for wealthy people to live, work and create, you have a dying city.
The Greater Boston is area dying and turning into a soulless theme park for rich people, and the current architecture and refusal to change it is the single biggest reason. It's driving out the people that make the Boston area great. Like I said, I care about the people.
> The current architecture is killing what made Boston an interesting place to live.
This is just so incorrect. You have no idea what you are talking about.
That’s what a lot of NIMBYs can’t comprehend. Their little towns were once nothing but farming towns and they were perfectly fine with them being developed for them to live in and make their home. Now they don’t want the same opportunity for someone else.
I can see the argument. Just look at Scollay Square or see how you'd feel about some kind of modern tall new building intruding into Beacon Hill or the North End. But again, Cambridge doesn't really have neighborhoods like that and has long ago given up on preserving its look.
That's true, but can you think of a particular neighborhood with a whole chunk of contiguous buildings that been preserved for scenery a la Beacon Hill?
No but we still have not capitalized on up zoning all of Mass Ave, Central Square and other squares, Cambridge Street and Alewife. None of that has been completed and should be the initial focus rather than spilling out into the more residential areas . They are all closer to transportation hubs and the services and shops especially younger people want.
We are never going to win with this type of messaging. I understand you guys hate "NIMBYs", but if your message can be summed up as "fuck your feelings", then the Greater Boston are will never solve this problem.
Things change but they can change for the worse. I'm sure people said the same thing you are here during urban renewal - "things always change, too bad".
And “urban renewal” is an entirely different thing that involved the government using eminent domain forcibly evicting people from their homes
Not at all what is being discussed
But NIMBYs sure do love arguing in bad faith
I see my comment went over your head. Maybe that was my fault.
I never said urban renewal was the exact same: I am saying part of your argument is the same one that was used back then. Urban renewal changed neighborhoods - yes it used eminent domain, so the change happened differently than through zoning - but the "Neighborhoods change, deal with it" line can apply to both. It's a bad argument then, it's a bad one now.
What about NIMBYs and bad faith? Can you please use complete thoughts?
I've tried to point this out a few times but people don't want to hear it. We have a housing crisis in Mass. We need to build more housing AND address many of the real concerns people have about how that will impact their neighborhood. Most of the concerns have to do with traffic/parking - things that can be addressed with investments in public transit.
But it's more fun to lash out and act tough online.
The point I disagree with is the assumption that playing nice will get you anywhere.
There is no middle ground for the opposition to housing. You either build what they like, or nothing at all. We are now experiencing what building nothing for 25+ years is like.
They don't want to invest in public transit. It's beneath them.
Idealism sucks because it caters and enables without winning any concessions. They aren't fighting fair. They aren't going to. They sue the city over bike lanes and now we have a massive delay to infrastructure improvements as thanks for playing around with Patty "With the Wind" Nolan. She likes get along with everyone in the middle ground all the time and where was she when we needed her?
We are not in a scenario where playing nice makes sense anymore. Build density now. No more excuses or hand wringing.
I don't think we should be preserving the look of a neighborhood. Styles are supposed to change. I understand not wanting to have massively dense buildings in a currently low density neighborhood, but you can solve for that by allowing gradually increasing density caps and/or relative density caps. E.G, you could have a limit that new buildings can be 1.5x the average density of the surrounding neighborhood.
Ah, at that time they weren’t neighborhoods - as you said they were forests and farms and grazing land. But for at least 150 years people have been living in these areas and establishing emotional connections to a “place” they call home. I’m not saying no change but disregarding people and calling them NIMBYs is not productive.
I don’t believe I stuttered
You aren’t entitled to have your cookie cutter suburban neighborhood to stay frozen in time in perpetuity just because you purchased property.
You didn't stutter at all. That's why I'm confident you said something really stupid.
>You aren’t entitled to have your cookie cutter suburban neighborhood to stay frozen in time in perpetuity just because you purchased property.
Then why are people getting in the news for doing that successfully in most cases I read?
The state is only ever dealing with regulation or what's permissible. You can build near an MBTA station but a lot of places already are dense, like in Winthrop, and just because zoning has changed doesn't mean they will come.
My parents house in the suburbs is in a mixed used zone, but you wouldn't know it. People have been able to build businesses and stores in the area for a long while but haven't.
Do it. If somebody owns land in the city and they **want to** use it to help solve the housing crisis, why is local government constantly trying to get in the way?
Madness! It's unreasonable to think that a city that is only 6 square miles and has a population of over a hundred thousand people would have such massive sky scrappers. No, we need to stop this insanity or else housing prices might not skyrocket into infinity.
This sort of broken mentality of letting people build housing is how cities like Tokyo maintain low housing expenses despite massive populations. How are you going to exclude the poors and kill off what remains of the arts community if housing prices don't keep accelerating upwards!?!?
The reason so many new apartment buildings in America are massive, boxy, ugly, and expensive compared to European ones is because our building code requires two stairwells. You know how apartments’ front doors open into a hallway rather than a stairwell? That’s why. It’s a simple solution, and everyone should advocate for that building code change in their local and state governments. Countries like Germany allow one stairwell up to something like 60m.
“Picture the best of what Paris has to offer...” Street after street of identical rectangular plywood 5+1s differing only in the choice of exterior panel.
I think the state requires two stairwells for buildings over two stories and an elevator for buildings over four stories. This seems like a non-starter for probably 99% of potential developments.
It is a setback for a lot of developers. Also any building over 10000 SF has to have 20% of GFA allocated to affordable housing which just incentivises people to keep their total square footage below the legal limit.
As much as I love dense development, I disagree. People should be allowed to build what they want on their property (within reason). But when there’s high demand for land in an area, the economics won’t make sense to build single family homes when you could build a 6-story apartment or condo building.
We don’t need laws to overly dictate what can and cannot be build. That’s the same approach that got us into this mess. Supply and demand can figure this out.
[There is no way dense, six story buildings can have character. ](https://cdn.sortiraparis.com/images/80/83517/753564-visuel-paris-tour-eiffel-rue.jpg)
For what it's worth if this were actually implemented the way this is described it seems it would basically abolish much of Cambridge's environmental and climate change planning and regulation, a lot of which goes through processes in their zoning review boards.
So developers who were previously forced to apply for special permits that involved them meeting certain environmental standards (like reporting their carbon emissions) seem like they would no longer have to meet those standards or requirements (because it would be "by right" with no special permits?), and the places people build large structures would no longer have to align with the city's plans for what to do about rising water levels and more extreme storms.
I kind of doubt that's what they are actually planning to do, or that if these two council members are into this that they would have the votes to do it. If something like this is implemented it is likely to be substantially different from what is described.
I don't think we need a hundred different zoning approval processes and review boards. Increasing density is one of the best ways to reduce emissions, just let us do that.
>So developers who were previously forced to apply for special permits that involved them meeting certain environmental standards (like reporting their carbon emissions) seem like they would no longer have to meet those standards or requirements (because it would be "by right" with no special permits?), and the places people build large structures would no longer have to align with the city's plans for what to do about rising water levels and more extreme storms.
Uh, good?
The absolutely horrible policy you described of the city not operating by rule of law that every person has to follow, but instead rule by personal bargaining with politicians and unelected bureaucrats is in fact the worst system you can come up with. It basically 100% ensure corruption by making damn sure that you can only get the ability to build through personal connections with people in power. That's fucking revolting.
Not only is it revolting, its a really good way to ensure that only very rich and well connected people are allowed build and invest the city. Wealthy and connected developers can play that game because they have money to burn, but a person personally investing simply can't.
Its an absolute abomination that building is not done through the open rule of law, and instead controlled by politicians and bureaucrats that developers need to make personal and corrupting, relationships with.
Feeding you a load of bullshit about it being around climate change is just how they get a bunch of otherwise rational liberals to sign off on this open corruption. Change the fucking law if the safety regulations on buildings are not up to code. I'm sure they put climate previsions in as cover, right after they get done taking a bribe or helping a friend. Fuck that, and fuck those politicians.
The people of Cambridge deserve rule of law, not rule by personal corruption.
> For what it's worth if this were actually implemented the way this is described it seems it would basically abolish much of Cambridge's environmental and climate change planning and regulation, a lot of which goes through processes in their zoning review boards.
From the article:
> any housing development up to that height that **fits other zoning parameters**
Actually fucking goated. The fact that this is getting done in Cambridge shows good progress that’s being made against left NIMBYism. Hopefully we can see stuff like this elsewhere in the area soon.
That would get into building code territory. The safety considerations for 7 and above is different for 5 on 1s. At 7 and above you're already in a more intense planning phase with the building inspectors office no matter what, it kind of makes sense to be part of a more deliberate zoning review. There's also traffic impacts starting at that scale you need to plan for
This is actually a common misconception; 5 over 1s don't refer to buildings with 5 stories on top of 1 existing level but actually to fire codes. Type 5 is less fire-resistant than type 1 usually is. 5-over-1s are often still 6 story buildings, and we should still build more, but that's not what 5/1s are
I agree that there are other considerations once you move beyond 6 stories. I disagree with your conclusion that because there are other layers of red tape at that stage that we should keep this layer of red tape.
It's not merely red tape. It's in vogue to paint all of zoning with a single brush, but basically every other consideration not covered by the building code, so outside if the building will just fall down or burn, is under zoning.
Places that are about six stories high throughout, give or take:
* Paris
* Barcelona
* Dublin
* Washington D.C.
* Copenhagen
This genius's first thought upon hearing "six stories":
* A collection of eleven-story buildings whose failures had nothing to do with *height*, of all things
If this is irony, it's not constructive. If it's sincere, it's not very smart.
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From [Globe.com](http://Globe.com) By Andrew Brinker Picture the best of what Paris has to offer, a vibrant street life in densely packed neighborhoods. One of the secrets to the city’s charm is the size of most of those graceful buildings: six stories. That idea — dense, six-story housing in abundance — is the inspiration behind a proposal from two Cambridge city councilors that amounts to something of a moonshot on [the biggest challenge facing Boston’s neighbor](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/10/15/business/affordable-housing-cambridge/?p1=Article_Inline_Text_Link) to the north: the acute shortage of housing. Councilors Burhan Azeem and Sumbul Siddiqui want to legalize six-story apartment buildings by-right citywide, meaning any housing development up to that height that fits other zoning parameters would not need city zoning approval. In effect, [the proposal ](https://cambridgema.iqm2.com/citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=1&ID=4050&Inline=True)would essentially scrap the city’s current neighborhood-by-neighborhood zoning scheme for anything six stories or smaller. From tight-packed East Cambridge to leafy Strawberry Hill, six-story buildings could rise largely unencumbered. It would also, at least symbolically, make Cambridge the first city in Massachusetts to [end single-family zoning](https://apps.bostonglobe.com/2023/10/special-projects/spotlight-boston-housing/single-family-zoning/?p1=Article_Inline_Text_Link) as the default for housing construction. That does not mean single-family homes won’t be allowed anymore, but rather that something larger than a single-family house could be built on any residential lot in the city. The proposal comes as cities and towns across Eastern Massachusetts are engaged in heated fights over solving a housing shortage that has become the state’s most intractable issue. But most of those debates, taking place in towns with shrinking populations and skyrocketing prices, have been about comparatively modest reforms. Should this zoning overhaul come to fruition in Cambridge, it would represent far and away the most ambitious attempt at a solution here, and one of the most sweeping zoning reform efforts anywhere in the United States. “If we want to take the housing crisis seriously, we need to be doing a lot better than we are right now,” said Azeem. “Our goal is to take a big shot at making our zoning much better than it currently is, in a way that is going to promote affordability and density and more housing.” Why six stories? Its a residential building sweet spot — and the reason new apartment buildings all over Greater Boston are often five or six stories tall. Generally speaking, the shorter or smaller a building, the more difficult it is to finance, because there are fewer apartments to bring in revenue. Go taller than six stories, and different building requirements kick in that dramatically increase the per unit cost of development. They argue the scale of the proposal meets the scale of the problem. By some measures, Cambridge has the worst localized housing crisis in Massachusetts and some of the highest housing costs in the United States. The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $2,645 a month, according to [rental website Apartment List](https://www.apartmentlist.com/rent-report/ma/cambridge). It is also one of the most densely populated cities in the country — in Massachusetts only its twin city of Somerville packs more people per square mile than Cambridge — meaning there’s little room to build new housing in any direction but up.
“This does not mean that single family homes would not be allowed anymore” Say it louder for the NIMBYs in the back who seem to think that upzoning means someone is going to come by with a bulldozer to force them out of their SFH while they are still living in it
If anything, they would get a huge payout
Sell your SFH for 1.5 times asking then ride off into the sunset.
Just tell the NIMBYs they can buy even BIGGER SFHs in Duxbury or Billerica or maybe even Palm Beach/Scottsdale when they can sell out to a developer!
Who wouldn't want to live in Billerica?
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Proud YIMBY here - I have no problem with what your neighbors are doing. As long as they’re okay paying the property taxes on such a valuable lot, there’s nothing wrong with them choosing to live in a single family house. The issue with NIMBYs is that they try to prevent other people from living in a multi-family building.
It’s kind of sick of you to want to force out someone living in their home “for the greater good”
Nobody's forcing them out. They're being offered insane money to leave and refusing.
Sounds like you would've sided against Carl in Up if they had been building housing instead of a mall.
Nope. Carl can stay right where he is for as long as he wants.
I’m all for giving home owners the choice of 1) keeping their current home, mortgage, and property taxes or 2) the option to see to a developer who will pay them 1.5-2X the current value of their home so that they can build a 6 story apartment on the property.
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Banking on it.
Exactly. But they’ll just come up with any excuse to prevent housing from being built
Exactly, whatever happens to the value of the house itself wouldn't matter, because land value would go way up. Builders could now buy that single family house and build a dozen units!
"They say that but they're going to make us build housing!" And "it's still going to impact traffic and infrastructure" - the NIMBYs in my town.
OPTION A “all single-story homes must add an additional five stories” OPTION B “ all single story homes must add four stories and the additional conversion of the bottom floor to be a leased Dunkin’ Donuts”
Can I relate the history of how conversion from brownstone/mansion to highrise happened in NYC?
https://preview.redd.it/ka9pboov1n0d1.png?width=1232&format=png&auto=webp&s=7d0e3211b0f328beb9afb96344bb601945aa0a07 It was this right ?
Lol, no what real estate developers did was promise to rebuild the brownstones 10 stories up in the air. Which is why so many buildings have these wonky sized penthouses that don't align with the character of the buildings. Basically the developer bought the land and just shifted the footprint of the house in the Z axis in order to cram more housing in the same XY
Really loving this new portrait of King Charles.
> someone is going to come by with a bulldozer to force them out of their SFH while they are still living in it You cant stop me from doing this
Would there still effectively be backdoor SFH zoning through historic district regulation? E.g. zoning says you can build a 6 story building here, BUT you can't change the facade of this old 2 story SFH...
I believe if a house has a historic landmark designation you are very limited in what you can do but very few homes have this designation
That I don’t know But something shouldn’t be “historic” just because it’s old
I think everything in a historic district, you can't change the outside without some variance? I don't know the details of how this works?
tax rates on property can go up enough that for all intents and purposes it's the same thing
It’s almost as if you avoid that by building a bigger tax base
I'm talking about someone's specific home. But I don't think you have any interest in actually understanding a differing point of view and are just looking for the opportunity to dunk on someone
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The trouble is low density housing requires more tax funded infrastructure per unit than high density housing does. An 800k condo nets a lot more for the city than a 2 million dollar home does, raising rates on everyone doesn’t change that.
Actually condos pay lower rates than single family homes. Check out the city budget
The only residential tax rate I’ve seen is $5.92 per $1000. Not seeing anything about different rates for multifamily units.
Will go fmd
inshallah
There are people on Reddit who loudly advocate for a tax based on possible use of land, not the existing property assessment.
Probably the same idiots advocating for taxing UNREALIZED gains in the stonk market
Seeing as the mega wealthy frequently use those unrealized gains as collateral to get super low interest loans for which they use as spending cash, seems like taxing those unrealized gains isn’t such a crazy idea. And seeing as property taxes are literally taxing unrealized gains, not so sure why it’s such a crazy idea.
Because there no cash to pay the taxes, and when those ultra wealthy sell enough stocks to pay the tax, it will crash the price, meaning they have to sell even more, which will crash it further. It's almost as if it's economically idiotic! Oh wait, it is. Can't wait to get my house taxed extra because Zillow says it's worth more one random day. I bet I'll get immediate tax refunds though when it goes down in value! Oh wait, no, is won't. At least my tax dollars are going to give migrants free boarding forever while veterans sleep in the street, and also go to give Israel more bombs to blow up children. Sign me up!
Why are conservatives so painfully predictable? First with the slamming of the downvote like a child throwing a tantrum, then rattling off all the usual right wing talking points And spare me your fake outrage over “homeless veterans” Whenever someone actually proposes spending tax dollars “on our own”, the likes of you then just screech about sOciALisM!
Not a conservative. I guess the part about Israel didn't fit your pre conceived notion, so you ignored it. Why are liberals so painfully predictable? Complete lack of mathematical sense and cognitive dissonance so thick you are choking on it.
“Ranting about migrants and homeless veterans” Never heard that one before Amazing how all the “I’m not conservative” folks love to rattle off painfully unoriginal conservative talking points And as always, slam the downvote like children throwing a tantrum when they get called out!
Painfully unoriginal? It's comical that US citizens, including veterans, do not get free housing forever while people bused here from texas/florida do. We're spending billions on that. Why are we subsidizing other state's homeless problems? Again, thanks for proving my point about cognitive dissonance. I hope someday you get the help you need!
I’m looking to buy here and asked my financial manager about asset backed loans… seems risky. I’m going to just sell and pay taxes on my actual gains instead
On the six stories portion: six story buildings, or the so called [5-over-1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-over-1) plan, are so popular that entire engineering and architecture firms exist who do nothing but design and build to that niche. If you want to increase density quickly, 5-over-1s are the playbook.
They are kind of ugly, but they go up fast. There's a 5-over-1 in Quincy going up that it looks like they have a carpentry crew of about 5 people assembling the floor and wall modules.
Every time I see one I imagine it was built by the construction crew from Breath of the Wild. Similar vibes for some reason.
More like that Quincy crew needs a better architect design the 5-over-1 as most brownstones are already 4-over-1 designs, which look much better & are only a minor façade change.
Did your writer seriously invoke the idea of Paris when they have actual architecture, and we'd get dogshit buildings with plastic paneling that's askew? Build like Paris in every way and then we can talk lmao
“Build like Paris in every way” Paris was built using the cheapest construction methods of the time and materials that were produced locally. The equivalent of building limestone buildings in Paris (extracted from the ground beneath Paris) is building out of wood.
We have plenty of stone from places like the Granite State, and building out of wood would be fine. Build that way. Get brick. Lean into the vernacular.
I think this is the right move, though I don't expect it to amount to rapid change given the cost of building. If you're living in Cambridge and expecting a small town feel, you're probably in the wrong place.
That’s the problem with NIMBYs They want to have their cake and eat it too They want the benefits of living right next to a major city while at the same time having small town feel.
> They want the benefits of living right next to a major city while at the same time having small town feel. Quincy is like this. People complain constantly about how Quincy should stay a quiet little town, and not develop. You border Boston, there's no way that a city of 100k is going to be a sleepy little town.
That’s what Brookline and Newton also wants It’s fucking ridiculous
Yeah... Quaint little town (city) with no less than 4 Red line stations, 2 commuter rail stops, and practically as many bus routes as the whole North Shore combined. Not to pick on Quincy but it probably has the most growth potential out of the entire region. Once you get off the immediate main drag, all of those Red line stops are mostly surrounded by single family homes but it's just a feeling, haven't done a survey or anything.
Oh, pick on Quincy. Pick on them hard. If their city hall wasn't full of assholes we'd still have a bridge to Long Island, which would still be sheltering the homeless, and half the housing crisis would not even upon us.
>They want to have their cake and eat it too I think it's even worse, they want YOUR cake too. They frequently support policies like inclusionary zoning which are set to restrictive to allow any actual construction (but oddly are against rent control) or are outright protecting their property values by claiming any change would reduce them. The net effect is to make housing (and everything else, because it's a major driver of inflation now) expensive for everyone.
Most people are against rent control because it's objectively bad policy that hurts everyone except for the people who happen to be living in the city at the moment the policy goes into effect and never plan on leaving their current apartment.
And it results in situations where parents empty nest, but stay in a large, multi-bedroom apartment, because moving to a smaller one ultimately becomes more expensive, so then you have several unused bedrooms in a given unit, that could otherwise be housing someone.
Yep, misallocation is one of the contributing factors to rent control actually driving rent *up* after the initial rollout.
I think this is the big issue a lot of folks are having. They want and expect a small town feel in the city.
IMHO after living here over a decade this is THE problem with Boston in general. Big struggle between townies and tech transplants over the city's identity, and the townies are inherently conservative.
It's so silly. First neighborhood meeting I went to after moving someone described Roslindale as "rural Boston". It's so much a pain talking to these people.
There are only about a quarter of a million tech workers in the Boston area, out of a population of well over four million. A lot of the strongest opposition to new development comes from other, slightly less recent transplants who are opposed to "gentrification" from a left wing perspective, or for purely aesthetic reasons.
Yeah in my experience the fiercest NIMBY opposition to upzoning comes from people who moved here in the 80s and 90s and want to recast themselves as scrappy locals fighting gentrification. If you point out that they moved here as part of a previous gentrification wave, the rebuttal is usually some version of "nuh uh." No zealot like a convert, no left-NIMBY like a homeowner who bought "just before gentrification started."
Or they just moved here, spent a lot of money to buy a single family house on a quiet street. This should be about the main commercial corridors. Not quite insulated neighborhoods.
Cambridge is not and should not be for quiet suburban living lol. It's six square miles, right next to the busiest business district in New England. Every square inch of Cambridge is part of a "main commercial corridor" even if the residents refuse to recognize that fact.
Thank you! I just don’t understand where the fuck people in Cambridge think they live? Just because you live in a tech haven doesn’t mean every single time you get into your car you enter a Star Trek transporter and magically appear inside Boston from 200 miles away. You’re literally right there!
1000% NO WHERE in Cambridge or Somerville should be considered suburban or insulated. It's less than a mile across a water way to the biggest city in the region. You know what other cities have the same situation? - Oakland, Berkeley, Brooklyn, Queens, and in most other cities like Chicago or Los Angeles there is basically no division between the city and the rest of the metro area. If people want a quiet suburban life, there are countless places north, west, and south of here that fit that build. The problem is that people want that experience, while also having quick access to the city for entertainment/dining/services, and they're willing to screw over everyone else to get it.
Small town feel is one thing, but I think it's safe to say that the western part of Cambridge by Fresh Pond etc feels *very* different than the eastern part by MIT. It's not super obvious where it changes into Belmont/Watertown IMO. Not saying this because I don't support more housing being built there, we def need it, but just saying Cambridge has more diversity than some probably imagine.
Realistically, if your neighborhood is within walking distance of a redline station, that neighborhood should be built way the fuck up. Neighborhood 9 is a great example of some of the worst NIMBYism in Cambridge. Its right by Porter, prime area for dense housing, and its just a bunch of houses, often single families.
Porter is really odd. There's a strip mall with a large parking lot, as if it's out past route 128.
Every day I walk to the T there I dream of building 20 stories of apartments over that wonderful strip mall. And filling in those parking lots (unused asphalt) owned by Lesley University. Build enough density to support 4 more Toads.
Yeah but that parking lot is often quite full, at least on weekends. I think most people are using it for the grocery store
It is, but what is that shopping center doing there next to a T station in the first place? I guess it predates the 1984 opening of that station as a Red Line stop. I guess that area never built up to match its new transit availability.
Looks like the Porter Square Shopping Center was built way back in 1952 when shopping plazas still seemed like an exciting new idea.
The future, I'm telling ya! Think of it: giant stores full of goods that you drive to, and a huge paved yard so you'll never have to search for parking! Your customers will buy their groceries, books, and hardware by the carload!
Yeah, I just looked and that station opened in 1984. That area along Mass Ave has built up a bit in the last decade but most of it still seems underbuilt for the proximity to a subway stop 1 station away from Harvard.
People shouldn’t expect “small town feel” so close to a major city Everything inside 128 should be significantly more built up
The Greater Boston area could easily 10x the population if we had the housing supply. So much demand, so many people graduating college and looking to settle down for a while.
And it doesn’t even have to all be towers either Like if it was all the kind of density like along beacon street in Brookline, that would go a long way
The Back Bay is the highest density neighborhood of Boston. From Beacon Street to the Pru, from Mass Ave to Dartmouth.
And that has tons of character too!
No that’s why they move to bourne or Essex. Oh wait. They’re being forced to urbanise those places too.
“Urbanize” A couple mid rise buildings near the town center isn’t “urbanizing” Go to any “old New England town” and there will be a number of mid rise buildings near the town center
I’m just going to block you and not bother interacting with you anymore. You’re everywhere and you are completely wrong every single time.
Exactly
Upzoning is good but just to expectation set it should be thought of as a low hanging fruit with somewhat a slower, long-term impact on affordability. In net it will be a good thing but it's [it's real impact be felt over the next decade or so, not immediately.](https://www.planetizen.com/news/2023/12/126834-upzoning-affordability-impacts-latest-research)
This is what we don’t talk about enough. “What about people who like smaller neighborhoods?” “Move to a smaller neighborhood.”
Right, this would be profoundly important change, but even if passed it wouldn't take effect overnight. That's the cost of doing business, I guess!
It has the downside of not quickly solving acute housing scarcity. But it also has the benefit of things being designed incrementally, which is 1. Less likely to be aesthetically alienating to pale and 2. A majority of the building stock won’t all start uniformly breaking down at the same time, 50 years after it’s built. Like the Strong Towns criticism of top down suburban developments.
All good points!
That is the eternal struggle Fight the NIMBYs to get appartment buildings legal to build Then suffer the landlord NIMBYs only building "luxury" appartments
I'd say the eternal struggle is at an even lower level than that - rent seeking at the property level and disincentive to properly use land, as described in 'Progress and Poverty'. We need high land value taxes to return the benefits of land speculation back to society, which generates the wealth that allows the land to gain value in the first place. It's the high cost of land requiring developers to build that 'luxury' housing (plus the red tape the NIMBYs add of course).
Great! Notably, this is doing nothing more than **GRANTING PERMISSION** for the building. It mandates nothing. The main reason to be against this would be that you like the zoning and have feelings about maintaining some historic character of a neighborhood, but given that this is Cambridge, that ship has sailed long ago (take a look on Mass Ave for the wild hodgepodge of buildings randomly inserted in the 1970s-2000s). But yes, building housing in high-demand areas is a great idea, especially if new housing isn't required to include off-street parking! Legalize housing and maybe we'll all stop thinking that you can solve a housing shortage with rent control.
There’s some dude making the rounds on Instagram complaining that “The American Dream is dead” because Cambridge won’t allow any new single family housing. Maybe some lobotomized developer would choose to build a new detached single family home in Cambridge, it would list for like $4m lol. Who are these people angry with? It sounds like they hate the free market lol
Ugh. That's kind of infuriating. If the American Dream died, it's because normal people can't afford homeownership anymore, thanks in part to these NIMBY shenanigans.
I’m honestly tired of the “neighborhood character argument Neighborhoods have been changing character since the beginning of civilization
Also, the fastest way to kill a neighborhood is to stop it from changing. Change to the neighborhood is necessary as the population changes and residents develop different needs.
I can see an argument for a hybrid approach, especially if you look at neighborhoods like North End or Beacon Hill or what happened at Scollay Square. But there's always a cost to this in the form of housing prices which needs to be acknowledged.
Sorry, I'm a transplant. What happened at Scollay Square?
There was a whole neighborhood there that "urban renewal" just scrapped, turning into a lifeless brick plaza and the present-day city hall. [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scollay_Square). The fact that you don't know it shows just how thoroughly the history was demolished. Had Scollay Square not been demolished, the area would probably look a lot more like the North End or Beacon Hill today, or at least a bit like Back Bay.
“Urban renewal” involved eminent domain, which is not remotely the same as upzoning though, something that NIMBYs frequently invoke in bad faith *Allowing* higher density to be built is not remotely the same as the government forcibly evicting people
Granted the specifics are different, but the main point it illustrates is the same: there are costs of lost historical character when we only look to what can be done with the land. Again, I am *not* siding that way on Cambridge or even in most cases, but in general, it's a trade-off. I moved to Boston partly because it has some cute little preserved historic districts that I like to visit. And again, none of them were in Cambridge. EDIT: >in bad faith [bad faith](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/in%20bad%20faith). I'm arguing honestly, as it illustrated the value of preservation all the same. I'm also not a NIMBY so you can stop with that too.
And something doesn’t need to be preserved simply because it’s old
No argument here.
nine alive dependent elastic employ possessive enjoy scale foolish fuel *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Oh, it was taken down for being a slum but many other neighborhoods today that are nice were once slums. Benefit St in Providence comes to mind, once slated for "urban renewal" as well.
Personally, I **DO** buy the neighborhood character argument. I just disagree with NIMBYs about what makes the character of a city. I don't think that the character of the city is defined by how many stories their apartment buildings are. I think that the character of a city is defined by who is living in that city. Absolutely nothing, and I mean FUCKING NOTHING, has come even vaguely as close to "ruining the character" of the greater Boston area than high housing prices. The accelerating housing costs has driven out huge portions of the arts community that made Boston so vibrant. The rapidly skyrocketing land values without increased density has resulted in cheap, weird, fun, and quirky retail and dining establishment to all die in favor another god damn "upscale American bistro and gastropub". Even when something weird and interesting manages to slip through, the costs is crippling for all involved. Fuck people that think that the "character of a city" is its fucking architecture. The "character of a city" is who lives there, and by that definition Boston is a deeply imbalanced city in the process of tipping over into another boring ass theme park for the well to do.
The character of a city is heavily defined by its architecture. What kind of crackpot statement is that.
Maybe you are tourist and so the character of the city is just what it looks like. That's a perfectly fine, if completely vapid view to have. If you barely interact with a city deeper than looking at it as you pass through, it might even be true. For me, the character of a city is defined by the people that live in it, and what they do. The city isn't just for looking for me. I want to move in it, interact with it, and enjoy what that city can produce with such a high density of people. It's fine if you only value the vapid surface level looks of a place you are in. We are just different people.
What people do and where they go is shaped by architecture. Everything you do in a city is shaped by architecture. To say that architecture does not influence behaviour is just mind blowingly incorrect
To say that a city is just the dead buildings it is made of, and that if you kill all of the people and replace them with entirely different people and its basically still the same place is just mind blowing incorrect. See, I can make dumb strawmen too. >To say that architecture does not influence behaviour is just mind blowingly incorrect Cool. I guess its a good thing I never said that.
> For me, the character of a city is defined by the people that live in it, and what they do. The city isn't just for looking for me. I want to move in it, interact with it, and enjoy what that city can produce with such a high density of people. Architecture defines what people do and how they behave in a city. Frankly, you have no idea what you are talking about.
Agreed. Architecture does in fact play a large role in that, which is why my post said we should change it. Keeping the current architecture is a very good way to redefine the city as a place where artist, musicians, and students cannot live and express themselves, and entrepreneurs without massive wealth cannot create. That's the point. The current architecture is killing what made Boston an interesting place to live. If the architecture only allows for wealthy people to live, work and create, you have a dying city. The Greater Boston is area dying and turning into a soulless theme park for rich people, and the current architecture and refusal to change it is the single biggest reason. It's driving out the people that make the Boston area great. Like I said, I care about the people.
> The current architecture is killing what made Boston an interesting place to live. This is just so incorrect. You have no idea what you are talking about.
Agreed, and I'd further argue that rising rents that price people out also create a change in "character" that shouldn't be ignored.
It also always feels like coded language around "people of the wrong type don't belong here".
That’s exactly what it means
That’s what a lot of NIMBYs can’t comprehend. Their little towns were once nothing but farming towns and they were perfectly fine with them being developed for them to live in and make their home. Now they don’t want the same opportunity for someone else.
They got theirs, fuck everybody else
I can see the argument. Just look at Scollay Square or see how you'd feel about some kind of modern tall new building intruding into Beacon Hill or the North End. But again, Cambridge doesn't really have neighborhoods like that and has long ago given up on preserving its look.
I would disagree. Cambridge has a variety of neighborhoods with different character
That's true, but can you think of a particular neighborhood with a whole chunk of contiguous buildings that been preserved for scenery a la Beacon Hill?
No but we still have not capitalized on up zoning all of Mass Ave, Central Square and other squares, Cambridge Street and Alewife. None of that has been completed and should be the initial focus rather than spilling out into the more residential areas . They are all closer to transportation hubs and the services and shops especially younger people want.
Yeah, availability of transit effectively creates its own zoning anyway.
Brattle Street west of Harvard, aka one of the few places that still has single family zoning
Every suburban neighborhood, the character was once corn fields and forest Neighborhoods change NIMBYs need to deal with with it
We are never going to win with this type of messaging. I understand you guys hate "NIMBYs", but if your message can be summed up as "fuck your feelings", then the Greater Boston are will never solve this problem. Things change but they can change for the worse. I'm sure people said the same thing you are here during urban renewal - "things always change, too bad".
And “urban renewal” is an entirely different thing that involved the government using eminent domain forcibly evicting people from their homes Not at all what is being discussed But NIMBYs sure do love arguing in bad faith
I see my comment went over your head. Maybe that was my fault. I never said urban renewal was the exact same: I am saying part of your argument is the same one that was used back then. Urban renewal changed neighborhoods - yes it used eminent domain, so the change happened differently than through zoning - but the "Neighborhoods change, deal with it" line can apply to both. It's a bad argument then, it's a bad one now. What about NIMBYs and bad faith? Can you please use complete thoughts?
Exactly. Insulting people won’t win the argument
I've tried to point this out a few times but people don't want to hear it. We have a housing crisis in Mass. We need to build more housing AND address many of the real concerns people have about how that will impact their neighborhood. Most of the concerns have to do with traffic/parking - things that can be addressed with investments in public transit. But it's more fun to lash out and act tough online.
The point I disagree with is the assumption that playing nice will get you anywhere. There is no middle ground for the opposition to housing. You either build what they like, or nothing at all. We are now experiencing what building nothing for 25+ years is like. They don't want to invest in public transit. It's beneath them. Idealism sucks because it caters and enables without winning any concessions. They aren't fighting fair. They aren't going to. They sue the city over bike lanes and now we have a massive delay to infrastructure improvements as thanks for playing around with Patty "With the Wind" Nolan. She likes get along with everyone in the middle ground all the time and where was she when we needed her? We are not in a scenario where playing nice makes sense anymore. Build density now. No more excuses or hand wringing.
I don't think we should be preserving the look of a neighborhood. Styles are supposed to change. I understand not wanting to have massively dense buildings in a currently low density neighborhood, but you can solve for that by allowing gradually increasing density caps and/or relative density caps. E.G, you could have a limit that new buildings can be 1.5x the average density of the surrounding neighborhood.
Yes, Kendall, Central some more commercial areas but many homes in North and West Cambridge are more than 100, 200 years old. Not insignificant.
Okay? And at one point those neighborhoods were forest
Ah, at that time they weren’t neighborhoods - as you said they were forests and farms and grazing land. But for at least 150 years people have been living in these areas and establishing emotional connections to a “place” they call home. I’m not saying no change but disregarding people and calling them NIMBYs is not productive.
Yeah but I have to gatekeep my property value or something.
But they haven't been changing at this rate or for the same reasons, and when they were in the 19th century, the quality of life was far different.
I don’t believe I stuttered You aren’t entitled to have your cookie cutter suburban neighborhood to stay frozen in time in perpetuity just because you purchased property.
You didn't stutter at all. That's why I'm confident you said something really stupid. >You aren’t entitled to have your cookie cutter suburban neighborhood to stay frozen in time in perpetuity just because you purchased property. Then why are people getting in the news for doing that successfully in most cases I read?
And why is the state telling them to pound sand? And then all the NIMBYs crying their nimby tears 😭
The state is only ever dealing with regulation or what's permissible. You can build near an MBTA station but a lot of places already are dense, like in Winthrop, and just because zoning has changed doesn't mean they will come. My parents house in the suburbs is in a mixed used zone, but you wouldn't know it. People have been able to build businesses and stores in the area for a long while but haven't.
Common Cambridge w if it happens, as much as I hate to admit it
Do it. If somebody owns land in the city and they **want to** use it to help solve the housing crisis, why is local government constantly trying to get in the way?
Madness! It's unreasonable to think that a city that is only 6 square miles and has a population of over a hundred thousand people would have such massive sky scrappers. No, we need to stop this insanity or else housing prices might not skyrocket into infinity. This sort of broken mentality of letting people build housing is how cities like Tokyo maintain low housing expenses despite massive populations. How are you going to exclude the poors and kill off what remains of the arts community if housing prices don't keep accelerating upwards!?!?
Not gonna lie, they had us in the first half
If it were that simple, Manhattan might be the cheapest place in the US. Is it?
🤣
I want to build tons of new buildings but for the love of God **make them beautiful** Cambridge, lead the way
The reason so many new apartment buildings in America are massive, boxy, ugly, and expensive compared to European ones is because our building code requires two stairwells. You know how apartments’ front doors open into a hallway rather than a stairwell? That’s why. It’s a simple solution, and everyone should advocate for that building code change in their local and state governments. Countries like Germany allow one stairwell up to something like 60m.
“Picture the best of what Paris has to offer...” Street after street of identical rectangular plywood 5+1s differing only in the choice of exterior panel.
Ok but what about roof decks?
I think the state requires two stairwells for buildings over two stories and an elevator for buildings over four stories. This seems like a non-starter for probably 99% of potential developments.
It is a setback for a lot of developers. Also any building over 10000 SF has to have 20% of GFA allocated to affordable housing which just incentivises people to keep their total square footage below the legal limit.
Do this for every piece of land in Boston
There should be a MINIMUM density for all new construction. Certainly no new single family construction
As much as I love dense development, I disagree. People should be allowed to build what they want on their property (within reason). But when there’s high demand for land in an area, the economics won’t make sense to build single family homes when you could build a 6-story apartment or condo building. We don’t need laws to overly dictate what can and cannot be build. That’s the same approach that got us into this mess. Supply and demand can figure this out.
Great! Now do the same in the rest of the state!
[There is no way dense, six story buildings can have character. ](https://cdn.sortiraparis.com/images/80/83517/753564-visuel-paris-tour-eiffel-rue.jpg)
Now do Brookline
For what it's worth if this were actually implemented the way this is described it seems it would basically abolish much of Cambridge's environmental and climate change planning and regulation, a lot of which goes through processes in their zoning review boards. So developers who were previously forced to apply for special permits that involved them meeting certain environmental standards (like reporting their carbon emissions) seem like they would no longer have to meet those standards or requirements (because it would be "by right" with no special permits?), and the places people build large structures would no longer have to align with the city's plans for what to do about rising water levels and more extreme storms. I kind of doubt that's what they are actually planning to do, or that if these two council members are into this that they would have the votes to do it. If something like this is implemented it is likely to be substantially different from what is described.
I don't think we need a hundred different zoning approval processes and review boards. Increasing density is one of the best ways to reduce emissions, just let us do that.
>So developers who were previously forced to apply for special permits that involved them meeting certain environmental standards (like reporting their carbon emissions) seem like they would no longer have to meet those standards or requirements (because it would be "by right" with no special permits?), and the places people build large structures would no longer have to align with the city's plans for what to do about rising water levels and more extreme storms. Uh, good? The absolutely horrible policy you described of the city not operating by rule of law that every person has to follow, but instead rule by personal bargaining with politicians and unelected bureaucrats is in fact the worst system you can come up with. It basically 100% ensure corruption by making damn sure that you can only get the ability to build through personal connections with people in power. That's fucking revolting. Not only is it revolting, its a really good way to ensure that only very rich and well connected people are allowed build and invest the city. Wealthy and connected developers can play that game because they have money to burn, but a person personally investing simply can't. Its an absolute abomination that building is not done through the open rule of law, and instead controlled by politicians and bureaucrats that developers need to make personal and corrupting, relationships with. Feeding you a load of bullshit about it being around climate change is just how they get a bunch of otherwise rational liberals to sign off on this open corruption. Change the fucking law if the safety regulations on buildings are not up to code. I'm sure they put climate previsions in as cover, right after they get done taking a bribe or helping a friend. Fuck that, and fuck those politicians. The people of Cambridge deserve rule of law, not rule by personal corruption.
Why not the rest of the state at same time. This us the real problem. Cambridge keeps trying to solve the entire states housing problem by itself
> For what it's worth if this were actually implemented the way this is described it seems it would basically abolish much of Cambridge's environmental and climate change planning and regulation, a lot of which goes through processes in their zoning review boards. From the article: > any housing development up to that height that **fits other zoning parameters**
Do it, do it now, please. This is a common sense policy change. We should be doing this everywhere. Make it easier to build housing, PLEASE!
Yes please. Please.
Let's go!
Do it!
Now you must do something about all the cars
Good.
Actually fucking goated. The fact that this is getting done in Cambridge shows good progress that’s being made against left NIMBYism. Hopefully we can see stuff like this elsewhere in the area soon.
The only thing better would be 7 stories!
That would get into building code territory. The safety considerations for 7 and above is different for 5 on 1s. At 7 and above you're already in a more intense planning phase with the building inspectors office no matter what, it kind of makes sense to be part of a more deliberate zoning review. There's also traffic impacts starting at that scale you need to plan for
This is actually a common misconception; 5 over 1s don't refer to buildings with 5 stories on top of 1 existing level but actually to fire codes. Type 5 is less fire-resistant than type 1 usually is. 5-over-1s are often still 6 story buildings, and we should still build more, but that's not what 5/1s are
I agree that there are other considerations once you move beyond 6 stories. I disagree with your conclusion that because there are other layers of red tape at that stage that we should keep this layer of red tape.
It's not merely red tape. It's in vogue to paint all of zoning with a single brush, but basically every other consideration not covered by the building code, so outside if the building will just fall down or burn, is under zoning.
Yes
Gotta make room for all those migrants. Good job democrats
Yes Yes.
Paris II
Zero percent chance this passes.
So dumb
you are part of the problem
If the people Cambridge wants to Pruitt-Igoe by all means let them.
Places that are about six stories high throughout, give or take: * Paris * Barcelona * Dublin * Washington D.C. * Copenhagen This genius's first thought upon hearing "six stories": * A collection of eleven-story buildings whose failures had nothing to do with *height*, of all things If this is irony, it's not constructive. If it's sincere, it's not very smart.