As an urban planner who writes often about neighborhood change, the recent attacks on Cambridge’s Multifamily Housing Zoning Ordinance (MHZO) are not terribly surprising.
To me, they represent a darker side of human nature, a recurring impulse to hoard what we have and prevent others from enjoying it.
It often masquerades as something else — sometimes as seemingly benign concerns about setbacks or historic preservation — but its roots are in the selfish and snobbish impulse to exclude: to choose ourselves over others.
“That doesn’t belong here,” is often synonymous with “They don’t belong here.“
I would urge our city leaders to reject this self-serving instinct, and to instead stay the course: to keep our MHZO as-is — to choose more neighbors, more diversity, and more affordability as we build a more vibrant, abundant Cambridge.
Noah Harper, AICP / Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
A stronger
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The letter writer is exactly right. Opposition to MHZO often cloaks exclusion in the language of preservation, but the underlying impulse is clear: to limit who gets to live in Cambridge.
Cambridge should not retreat into scarcity and gatekeeping that protect the status quo for the already well off. Maintaining MHZO is not just sound policy that benefits most residents. It is a statement about who we are and how we treat others.
This is exactly right. Much of the opposition to MHZO dresses itself up in the language of design or preservation, but the outcome is the same: exclusion. In a city with extreme demand, blocking housing is a choice about who gets shut out.
Cambridge cannot claim to value inclusion while using zoning to ration access to the city. You cannot have it both ways.
MHZO is a modest, necessary step toward undoing that scarcity. Rolling it back to preserve “neighborhood character” is just a more polite way of preserving exclusivity.