Urban Planners Speak on Cambridge Up-zoning Proposal

Three local Urban Planners were invited to address the  proposed Cambridge City Council Up-zoning at the Neighborhood and Long-Term Planning Committee meeting organized and chaired by Councillor Cathie Zusy on January 8, 2025. This very insightful meeting featured three local urban planners. The power points of each are shown below along with a brief overview of the points raised by each of these professionals. After the presentations of our city councillors, which included all City Councillors with the exception of Marc McGovern, were invited to ask questions of the experts.

This was an extraordinary forum and one that should have taken place in May or June of 2024 when the current up-zoning petition was being drafted, largely with the input of local developers. Residents, Councillors, and city staff alike should have been hearing from the experts far earlier, not just now, a few weeks before the end of this process. We owe Councillor Zusy a huge debt for organizing and hosting this event. 

The powerpoint images of each of the speakers are provided beneath each.

Update1: View the complete video of the 1:00 PM Committee meeting with the Urban Planners: HERE
Update  2: see comments at the end.

The conclusions of the experts are that: 
1. Cambridge Envision Plan is a very good one, and was created with a lot of citizen buy-in. They should follow this model and also provide visualizations of what things will look like in different areas and work to get citizen buy in.
2. Cambridge should move to form-based zoning - like Somerville, Portland ME, Miami, Denver,  and other areas, however this takes time.
3. Resident engagement and buy-in are important.

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The first speaker was Prof. Chris Zegras of MIT. He spoke of the need for a rational plan - framed as a wheel with different needs all in play. He noted that the current proposal will not lead to meeting Envision planning goals.He noted that form-based zoning aims for diversity within a zoning context. He asks:

• What alternatives were considered?
• What types of analysis were done?
• In what ways will this lead to meeting our Envision goal? 

Prof. Chris Zegras (MIT Urban Planning)

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The next speaker was Prof. Jeff Levine, who is also on the urban planning faculty at MIT and has been involved in municipal planning as part of his career - Portland Maine, Somerville, Brookline.  He observed that 

• The private sector that initiated redlining - the use of zoning to promote or create segregated communities. Implied by this was the issue of why we as a city would want to turn our decision making on housing over to the private sector (the market - developers and investors). This is an important point because the current proposal is seeking to use the private sector  here.
• Zoning per se may not move the needle much on housing unless it reduces the land costs per unit. Implied by this is the reality that the new plan is likely to increase land costs per unit, rather than decrease them.
• Any changes take a long time and one should be patient. 
• Local review is important to help fix and address problems. This can be germane both to design review process and to the need for regular city review of any policy 
• If affordability is a goal, Portland ME did not see prices go down despite up-zoning because so many people want to move there. Implied: the same is true for Cambridge. Instead we need to subsidize affordable units and build more of them.
• Zoning cycles are common and one can see back lash.
• Doing things incrementally is better.
• Be aware that form-based plans also can used to codify injustices, so one should address this upfront. 
• Portland Maine's plan is similar to Cambridge's focusing on corridors and nodes.
• They did it in two phases. 1) they addressed the outdated zoning code and rewrote some of it to make it more usable. They also did "no brainer" changes like allowing auxiliary dwelling units (ADU) or ending parking minimums. 2) Then they looked into a more significant change based on a specific plan. With phase 2 they did lots of outreach and got lots of feedback. Portland's zoning passed in November 2024. They retained low heights (35') with higher on transit zones, and still higher downtown. They also added a means to measure success.
• In the Portland plan they have site plan review and one has to be approved to go forward. This is harder to appeal, but it requires owners/developers to flesh out changes suggested. It is not a yes or now question.

Prof. Jeff Levine (MIT Urban Planning)

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The final speaker was urban planning professor Maurice Cox of Harvard's Graduate School of Design. He had previously been both a councillor and a mayor and had also developed zoning in different contexts.  He supports:

• Incremental development and gentle density
• Using underutilized spaces - and planning out what might happen there (using the NYC example for this). In the Bronx for example, allowing 3-Stories instead of 2.
• Infill housing - allowing higher in lower density areas. 
• Piloting changes in different neighborhoods - and one must be cognizant of impacts on African American and Latin American neighborhoods. 
• Zoning reflecting the character of the city block. 
• Chicago used 3 firms all Boston-based. 
• Detroit - on avenues they allowed 6 stories and used form based zoning to differentiate scale and set backs consistent with each street. They promoted town houses of 2.5 stories. 3 stories for affordable. 30% were affordable. 
• Charlotte, VA - higher mostly on corridors. Developed in small increments. They did not see an erosion of character. Later they came back to make more changes. Ended  exclusive single family housing districts and added ADU by right.
• It is important to take the time.
• Design for values.
• Make it community compatible to accept change 
• Think long term. 
• Pace change. Work with new tools. ​

Prof. Maurice Cox (Urban Planning Harvard)

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QUESTION AND ANSWER WITH THE COUNCILLORS PRESENT

Councillor Burham Azeem spoke to political constraints. Implied by this for him is a political move not a planning decision, since nearly everyone in Cambridge supports allowing multi-family housing citywide, but simply would like a viable plan rather than leaving it to market forces.

• Prof. Cox:  increased affordability is important;
• Prof. Zegras: One needs to connect to vision, this plan is excessively reliant on the market, and one cannot rely on them to create affordability. What happens to those in the middle? 

Councillor Sobrinho-Wheeler: On inclusionary units, how do we get more units (not fewer)?

• Prof. Cox: 20% is the national norm. Chicago did 30% in some areas (like office conversion area in the center city with an Economic development bond by the city to cover the cost).
• Prof Levine:  it is hard to make 25% work for inclusionary housing. 

Councillor Siddiqui:  You suggest we need to be incremental but with interests high it is hard to build. what do you mean by incremental? What do we do? We can't do much.

• Prof Cox: Pace the work so community can receive it. Use form-based zoning and create a pattern book. You have time to course correct. Create [different] overlays.
• Prof. Zegras: Can one actually do radical change then do the code work? Will one get there How does one do radical then incremental? One needs to do parcel-based work.

Councillor Zusy: Speaking with solicitor, once developers have the permits, it is hard to go back. 

• Prof Levine: you need design guidelines that are good. The Planning Board can create the design guidelines.

Councillor Nolan: What about 3+3 and affordable; was it in specific areas?

• Prof Cox: Most communities do this in vacant areas. 
• Prof Zegras: One needs to invest for affordable. Affordability more expensive in expensive areas.
• Prof. Levine: there are deed restrictions, land backing but one needs to watch for foreclosures.

Councillor Toner: We can't rely on the market to get affordable. What about open space and setbacks. What do we mean by design oversight?  
Councillor Wilson: Do we slow down or just do it and how do we evaluate. 

• Prof. Cox: One makes hard choices, but I am a community engagement advocate and support form based zoning practices.

Note 1: the three urban planning experts all suggested that whatever would be done would see relatively slow results. This is not what we learned  from a Cambridge  real estate agent and developer who told us that:
1. Zoning enables developers to maximize within the zoning. 
2.. "If this plan passes, we will see almost instantaneous tear-downs because of how the numbers work.
3. His key worries included heat island impacts, green space, and trees. 
See his recent blogpost HERE

Update 1: Despite a housing shortage, Denver, Colorado has now put the breaks on dense development housing reform because of its negative impacts in minority neighborhoods. Read more:  HERE. The areas most likely impacted in our city, if the up-zoning plans go forward, are our once lower-income and minority neighborhoods. 

Update 2:  Individuals who watched the partial video of the Neighborhood and Long-Term Planning Committee meeting missed the first 75 minutes of the presentations and discussion of the three experts because of audio problems in the city system. During the presentations all three panelist experts wanted a more deliberate plan. In the Q&A a lengthy statement was presented by Councillor Azeem that the city had worked for years to get something passed and this was the first chance to do it. This was also missing from the partial video that many people saw. Following that comment, Prof. Cox altered the approach he had urged the city to take during his prepared delivery, suggesting instead that the city go ahead with the plan and then modify it later. The other experts did not support this idea, one noting that if this plan passes it would be too late to make modifications. Councillor Zusy observed the same thing, drawing on the perspective of the city solicitor.

During the Q&A there also was discussion of how long a Form-Based plan would take to create and implement, implying that this would slow things down too much. However, it is clear that Cambridge has already started the work on a Form-Based zoning, and it appears that they began this work soon after CCC submitted the Donovan petition to end exclusionary zoning in Cambridge in September 2021. CDD reported on the proposal at a Planning Board meeting in early October 2021. The results of this City initiative include the citywide GIS work, completed in 2022, a CDD report on Cambridge neighborhoods published in 2023, and the undertaking of several detailed studies of local neighborhoods in 2024 and 2025. Clearly the City is on track to complete this important planning work by 2026 or 2027. See our more recent blog post on this topic: HERE