 The Cambridge Community Development Department (CDD) recently initiated the Cambridge Neighborhood Planning Initiative (NPI). The city’s first neighborhood “Action Plan” work is beginning now in Mid-Cambridge, Neighborhood Nine, and Wellington-Harrington. The aim of this ultimately citywide effort is one that “gives everyone in Cambridge access to local planning! Together, we will work to improve the places and activities that are central to your daily life.The NPI offers ways to share your ideas, join with your neighbors, and connect with City staff. NPI activities focus on four community objectives.” The current citywide up-zoning petition being rushed by our city councillors toward ordination, significantly undermines this effort by removing future design oversight and both present and future planning goals from consideration in our neighborhoods, leaving critical elements of change up to investors and developers. Planning Board Chair, Mary Flynn, noted that the Planning Board have never received so many letters on an issue before the Planning Board as they had received on this up-zoning petition. Read below what several of our residents have had to say about the up-zoning plan (just a few of the many extraordinary ones that have been written: “A Letter to City Council” (January 7, 2025) authored by systems engineer Young Kim, a resident of North Cambridge, who has also encouraged the city to establish an office of compliance.He writes: “I was concerned to hear the discussion at Monday’s City Council meeting regarding the MFH Zoning Petition. I have raised several times with the City that the discussions around the MFH zoning amendments lacked clear goals and measurable metrics for success. Without these, it is difficult to assess if the petitions will effectively address housing needs. I urge you to consider recommending that the City Council refiles the MFH petitions with clearly defined goals, measurable metrics, and supporting analysis and impact studies. Additionally, I want to highlight the fundamental issue with the data presented by the CDD staff.The Planning Board meeting was rushed before Housing Projections could be included, yet they were available for the Ordinance Committee the following week. Basing their analysis on 2023 housing data when other documents showed 2024 data was available; and excluding "Affordable housing developed under the Affordable Housing Overlay (AHO) and/or funded by the Affordable Housing Trust", the CDD projected only 70 new units by 2030 under current zoning, far below the Envision Housing goal of 12,500 new units. However, new data released in December 2024 shows that affordable housing stock has already increased by 340 units-almost five times CDD’s 2030 projection.” Moreover, as of June 2024, there were 58,170 housing units under construction or completed, a net increase of 637 units since 2023 —far surpassing aforementioned 70 new units under current zoning. Not only that, the City had released Housing Data & Facts in April 2024 that with over 750 units currently under construction and nearly 4,000 units permitted, the city’s housing pipeline appears to be on track to meet future demand." Local Landscape Architect, Carolyn Shipley, posted the following text “City Council Promotes Global Warming and Flooding” on the Cambridgeport Neighborhood Listserve, January 7, 2025.She writes: The Cambridge City Council has proposed several housing plans that will cause environmental damage and add significantly to air pollution, hotter temperatures, and flooding, and other problems associated with global warming. An article in the Boston Globe Monday reported that the earth's thermometer has already passed the tipping point of an increase of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit of warming over preindustrial times. Perhaps none of the city councillors have much horticultural knowledge and don't understand that their plans to allow very tall and extremely tall buildings with very little green space, or open space, except a meager 10 feet* in front for some, will seriously reduce the city’s tree canopy. It is likely that many trees will be chopped down in order to erect these 6-story and 9-story buildings. *Note: that 10 ft. does not have to be green space. Besides, no tree that could help our environment could grow in such a narrow space. Mature trees clean the air we breathe. Mature trees contribute to lower temperatures because they provide shade that keeps the sun out of our houses and cools sidewalks and streets. Only mature trees that are about 20 years old provide the benefits necessary to combat global warming in Cambridge. The tall buildings being proposed in recent plans of the city council range from 6 stories tall to 9 stories tall or greater. The council's plans would allow contractors to build, build, build everywhere. (However, it has been mentioned that it probably won't happen in the more affluent sections of Cambridge.) Another environmental problem related to the reduction of the city's tree canopy is FLOODING. Tree roots and other vegetation absorb and hold rain water. Thus, trees prevent soil from eroding. In some sections of Cambridge soil erosion will increase the probability of flooding. Check the FEMA flood map for Cambridge. Is your neighborhood safe from flooding according to FEMA? Wind damage. Tall buildings not only create deep shade, but also create strong and dangerous winds. Trees cannot thrive in shade and strong winds. Any street trees planted by the city will suffer if tall buildings nearby create day-long deep shade and wind. Newly planted young trees will struggle and perhaps die.(Trees do not benefit the environment unless they are about 15 or 20 feet tall and wide.) What do the city councillors hope to gain by opening the door to developers? WE do, however, stand to GAIN a lot: GLOBAL WARMING – FLOODING. Shipley also notes that Cambridge is famous for its beautiful historical architecture. This poorly conceived proposal will probably cause the destruction of some attractive historical architecture and turn neighborhoods into a lot of 6-story vertical rectangles. (Many tourists come to Cambridge to see our historical architecture.) Another Cambridgeport resident, a transportation expert, posted this on his neighborhood Listserve in October 2024He writes: I took my…property, which is part of a three-lot subdivision that is 100 feet by 100 feet or 10,000 square feet. I used both front and rear setbacks of 15 feet to create an allowed building footprint of 7,000 square feet with 30% open space on the whole parcel. Six stories allowed means about 42,000 gross square feet. My three-decker is a 1,200 sq. ft footprint or 3,600 sq. ft for three floors. My ownership parcel is only about 2,400 s.f. The other two buildings on the site have about five units of about 5,000 s.f. altogether. Including my building, existing construction is about 8,500 s.f. So the new allowed building would be five times as dense (large) as exists on the site. I do not know how front setbacks are legally defined. Could front porches be cantilevered above the ground level 15-foot setback? How are basement apartments handled under the proposed zoning? If developers now have the potential for seven stories, that means a factor of six increase over existing density. Cambridge is often described as a very dense city. Why are we discussing new zoning that would increase densities by at least a factor of five? The eight units on site today have about five cars -- four parked on-street and one off-street. If new development generates proportionally the same number of cars, the allowance for no-minimum-parking means twenty-five to thirty new cars, which is close to six times more cars parked on-street compared to today, simply as the additional cars from just my 10,000 s.f. subdivision. On Sundays when everyone is at home, the street is parked full. Where do all the extra cars go? We appear to have a zoning proposal with the potential for quintupling the densities on individual residential lots, with six times the number of parked cars added to on-street parking. The proposed increases in site densities and on-street parking seem highly excessive. *Important editorial note: in the current ordinance text under consideration, the setback numbers are different, potentially making the differences even larger. These are now set at only 5’ at the sides and rear and 10’ at the front. Neighborhood Nine Resident, Mary Jane Kornacki, addressed City Council on January 6 with this text that speaks to issues around amendments.She writes: A policy order on the agenda asks the city manager to ask city departments for language for further amendments to the upzoning petition. Language for amendments was the topic of a request by the city council on December 23rd. Now another request. I suggest that all this amending in the time remaining before mid-February deadline to approve a zoning change does not allow sufficient time for two important actions:
It’s one thing to be “bold and innovative”. It is another to be smart, judicious, data driven and citizen responsive. Bold and innovated without data or broad public support sounds like a recipe for another disaster. I refer to Sunday’s Boston Globe headline regarding segregation in Cambridge schools. A bold idea, a failed policy. We have to do better on housing. There are thousands more statements like these that have been written in conjunction with this up-zoning proposal.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |