Rezoning effort gets first BPDA approval
Wu’s initiative aims to create more housing around transit in city
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s ambitious plan to create more housing in neighborhood centers across the city through a new approach to zoning took a big step forward Thursday.
The Boston Planning and Development Agency board approved an update to the city’s zoning code allowing for six “Squares + Streets” districts. The districts would allow for a range of residential and community uses along main streets, but would prohibit research labs and “large-scale industrial and vehicular uses,” according to a BPDA presentation. The lowest-level district would cap building heights at 50 feet, while the highest would allow for buildings of up to 145 feet.
In an approach known as “form-based zoning,” the move would set more standard zoning districts across the city. The process would allow residents to choose future redevelopment options from these defined templates, rather than developers requesting piecemeal zoning updates for individual projects.
“This is a different approach to zoning than Boston is accustomed to,” said Aimee Chambers, the BPDA’s director of planning. However, the process “respects and reflects Boston as one city of neighborhoods,” she said.
The update now heads to the city’s Zoning Commission. If approved, the BPDA staff will use the six Squares + Streets districts as a template of options for residents to decide how best to reshape their neighborhood main streets, a community process the agency expects to take six to nine months per area.
The BPDA has started a Squares + Streets community process in Hyde Park’s Cleary Square and Roslindale Square, and named an additional 16 neighborhood centers “that may be eligible” for the zoning. Those additional areas are: Allston Village, Brighton Center, Cleveland Circle, Codman Square, Egleston Square, Fields Corner, Forest Hills, Four Corners, Grove Hall, Hyde Park Ave, JP Centre, Mattapan Square, Packard’s Corner, Tremont Street (Mission Hill), Upham’s Corner, and West Roxbury Centre.
The agency cannot yet share a list of all areas in the city that will definitely undergo a Squares + Streets process, though the BPDA “can confirm that we will be considering Squares + Streets zoning districts for areas of Allston-Brighton that want mixed-use zoning,” a spokesperson said in an email.
Rezoning has long been considered a political minefield, particularly in a city like Boston where almost every real estate development project requires some kind of zoning variance and where neighbors have strong opinions about what gets built where. Indeed, many neighborhood associations and residents have asked for the city to slow down the Squares + Streets process in an effort to wrap their heads around the proposed changes.
As part of the new zoning, the city intends to hold workshops that “focus on broad zoning education, further familiarizing stakeholders with the new zoning districts, data implications and iterative visioning,” the spokesperson said in an email, adding that the BPDA hasn’t yet determined which neighborhood centers it will rezone, or in what order.
City Councilor Enrique Pepén said he had heard from many constituents who are “confused” by the process, but also those who were encouraged by a collaborative, community-based approach to rezoning.
“Folks still have questions, but this isn’t cemented in stone,” Pepén said. “The next step is when the community engagement will truly begin to happen.”