Ruth Ryals raryals@gmail.com ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Kelly Dolan <kelly.dolan.kd@gmail.com> Date: Thu, Dec 5, 2024 at 5:26 AM Subject: [Porter square] An Expert Weighs in on Eliminating Residential Zoning To: Porter Square Neighbors Association <portersquare@googlegroups.com> Thought this group would be interested in this from our Cambridgeport neighbor, Chris Zegras, professor and head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT * "Multifamily Housing Zoning Petitions" - comments on proposal from Nov 12 PB Meeting* Neighbors, You might or might not be interested in the below comments in reaction to last week’s planning board meeting on eliminating (basically…) residential zoning in Cambridge. Chris *From:* P. Christopher Zegras *Sent:* Monday, November 18, 2024 6:11 PM *To:* 'planningboardcomment@cambridgema.gov' < planningboardcomment@cambridgema.gov> *Subject:* "Multifamily Housing Zoning Petitions" - comments on proposal from Nov 12 PB Meeting To whom it may concern: I am writing with comments and concerns on the Zoning proposal presented at last week’s Planning Board Webinar. Specifically, the city must do a lot more work before approving such drastic and unprecedented changes to our city’s development possibilities and trajectory. Understandably, and obviously, affordable housing is a major concern in Cambridge (and greater Boston, and the state, and the nation, …). Cambridge can and should do it’s part, ideally in a coordinated fashion with the rest of Greater Boston (e.g., Brookline, Somerville, Milton, Belmont, etc.). That said, I also recognize the challenges (given our regional governance, or lack thereof) to such regional housing coordination. In the meantime, and at bare minimum, the city must start with a clear articulation of what it hopes to achieve by changing our zoning. As far as I can tell we have (or should have), at least, three basic “performance categories”: economic (employment, housing, commercial, office, etc.); infrastructure and services (roads, mobility, sanitation, electricity, education, etc.); environment (emissions, greenspaces, etc.). And, there is a clear distributional dimension within and across all of these (i.e., who “wins”, who “loses”). Any change in zoning should be articulated in direct reference to these multi-dimensional performance dimensions (or other ones that we, the city, choose). And, then, any proposals that are made should clearly and rigorously be assessed in terms of their predicted impacts on them (e.g., housing prices, parking demand, school slots, roadway congestion, transit ridership, vehicle emissions, retail profits, etc.). We have seen, from the Planning Board (at least last Tuesday), only one proposal: laissez faire (“as of right”). It’s an interesting proposal, but compared to what? We deserve at least three scenarios, e.g.,: 1. Do nothing (i.e., business as usual). 2. Laissez faire (basically, current proposal for 6 stories, ‘as of right’). 3. Corridor (e.g., Mass Ave) and or transit station-area densification. These (and/or others) should then be evaluated through the same process/methods, and with the same evaluation rubric. In other words, come up with a reasonable evaluation framework (monetization of all benefits and costs; multicriteria analysis; whatever) and implement a transparent analytical approach (e.g., an integrated microsimulation model with a visualization component) so that we can all see what will likely happen over, say, the next 20 years under each scenario. That would be the basis for well-informed deliberation, publicly, among the alternatives so that we can make well-informed choices about the desired future of our city and how we might get there. Absent such an approach, it’s impossible for this resident of Cambridge to accept the proposal being made; at least based on what was presented at the PB meeting, which did not show any anticipated impacts in any relevant dimension of concern (not even, say, estimated impact on housing prices vis-à-vis business as usual, which is, presumably the main justification for the proposal). The above basic suggestion is ‘Planning 101’. Cambridge is a sophisticated city, with significant resources (financial, intellectual, social, etc.), it can and must do better. Below are some additional notes I took during last Tuesday’s presentation. Thank you for your attention, Chris Zegras 1. Confounding multi-family with up to 6-stories, as of right. Why 6? Why not 12? Or 4? 2. “As of right,” out of context, will destroy already dense neighborhoods. 3. Focus should be where infrastructure is available, such as the dense travel corridors, with mass transit (e.g., Mass Ave) and the empty and/or underutilized lands. 4. No parking requirements is absurd and planning as wishful thinking. 5. City should do detailed microsimulation modeling (based on sound microeconomic theory) to predict where supply will arise and what the implications will be, in multiple dimensions. The slide titled "What does this change do?" is not based on any clear analysis. 6. Many of the laudable objectives presented (e.g., bringing existing housing into code, etc.), can be done without this complete de-zoning of the city. 7. What's the point of the review if there is no "risk"? 8. The collection of "smaller residential projects", in aggregate, can have impacts just as large (if not larger) than a single large project.... 9. Overall, it's very surprising that our city proposes basically throwing planning out the window: Eliminate any constraints and let the market decide!