Our City's Proposed New Design Guidelines

The City Staff is proposing new design guidelines for the city. You can read them HERE. These will come before the Planning Board on March 18, 2025 before being presented to the public shortly after. 

We note at the outset that there is very little here on single-family, two-family, and three-family homes in our residential neighborhoods. These are now going to be entirely without design oversight since the rezoning passed, and only will get a short look over by inspectional services. We need specific design criteria in place for these units, on everything from materials and facade treatment, to setbacks, roof decks, trash storage, and parking. And we see nothing specific in terms of criteria on different neighborhood contextual elements across of city neighborhoods although "site context" is noted as of importance. 

We also contacted several architects and urban design people and here is what they are telling us: 

We learn for example from John La Freniere that: "The introduction claims that "Cambridge is a walkable city where daily destinations are generally close to home".   Since the recent zoning change has been justified as being necessary to ease the huge housing shortage in the city,  it is clear for many people working here it is not home.  They are not walking here.   Similarly,  do most working residents actually work in Cambridge?  The premise that cars are somehow superfluous is false.  Even people who when they move here happen to work in Cambridge may have their jobs switched to Waltham or elsewhere. We are not NYC.  There is not the population size for Cambridge to be some sort of work/residence island which allow businesses and those who work elsewhere to thrive without any parking requirement for new construction."

As to the design criteria, he notes that:  "The new Guidelines are purely aspirational.  "By right" developments which are now much of the city have no obligation to conform to guidelines or "advice" from the public or City reviewers. Though many pages are devoted to what is "good design," it is confusing. In the introduction it does say design should address massing, context and local design patterns, but with no enforcement, why should anyone bother?" Furthermore "The 200 pages of urban design guidelines feel non-hierarchical.  What is most important? 
 "Sustainability" responses such as fins to shield solar gain are given equal weight as massing concerns, or breaking up of a flat facade.  This seems to be a catalogue of possible design moves, whether landscaping, massing, facade articulation, textures of materials,  There is no synthesis or hierarchy of ideas -- the illustrations are all individual vignettes. What if vertical fins are used on a 3 story box apartment building in the middle of a row of 2-family houses.  It can be justified as an environmental move in the guidelines but it would obviously be a terrible contextual design."
 
His conclusions are that the guidelines do "...not say what is most important where, which is what Urban design is all about.  While there are different ways to respond to different things, in an effort to be so comprehensive, there are in the end, few actual rules to follow."

Another architect long involved in the city's planning efforts also picked up on the bike infrastructure, stating that "I question the selection of the photo featuring a bicycle parking station in Harvard Square as the intro to the Streetscape section.   They are much better tucked into unused corners instead of bordering heavily traveled pedestrian sidewalks." He also  "...noticed there are few photos of streets with parked cars - presumably because they aren’t so nice, although parking is essential in residential neighborhoods."

This architect also noted that "...while the illustrations include some handsome new designs, this may not be all that helpful to staff and judiciary boards since these reviews must be careful to follow specific guidelines, and other groups such as the Planning Board have to be "...able to look at overall impacts and quality to get the best outcomes.  How do you write that into the guidelines?" He suggests as well that it would be important to include a specific "comparison with 1993 Policy Plan." We agree, because only then can we see what specifically has changed - and why." 

He also noted several lacuna in the plan. Among these, the  "[d]iscussion of Flood Resilience is...a concern;: This section "...is a slender skeleton  of principles given the scope of potential flood events. There probably should be a procedural requirement for a narrative presentation of risks and solutions." One needs to look both at East Cambridge and in  the Alewife area. The proposed plan also is missing a discussion under Noise impacts of the need for "...conformance with the city’s pretty stringent Noise impact ordinance, which in some places, like East Cambridge, exceed the background noise level in residential areas."

In addition to this, the plan supports the massing of large buildings up to the street wall but "This can be overdone, and pedestrian usable setbacks are often a good idea." He cites both Harvard's Holyoke/Smith Center Plaza and North Point on the north side of West Street are good alternative examples.