It was noteworthy that in their presentations on the Multifamily Housing Zoning Update City Council on June 25, the senior city administrators said “… be more honest … ” several times.
Throughout their presentation, there was clear concern expressed about the tree canopy, environmental issues, open space and so on, but no reference or consideration placed on the history and character of our neighborhoods. Walking around many parts of Cambridge is like walking around a movie set. The beauty, the character and the history represents our heritage and to not consider is no different than ignoring history and tradition by impetuously tearing down the East Wing of the White House to build a new ballroom!
I remember recent council meetings when counselors were concerned about the potential loss of a handful of parking spaces on Garden Street. Yet this presentation – almost 50 pages long – had no reference to parking until a single sub point near the end!
Why not make outside parking spaces a requirement for buildings larger than four or six units? That requirement would make the developer build on lot sizes that can support a multi unit building four to six stories high. It reduces their profit but makes them consider the impact of their development on the entire neighborhood.
We know that Cambridge needs more — and more affordable — housing, but the issue is how to achieve this goal without destroying neighborhoods, hurting the environment and green space and turning every street into a carbon copy of cheaply built multi-family buildings?
On behalf of all the residents who have spent decades of their lives as good neighbors in this city of amazing talent, resources, services and compassion, I implore Council to put stronger constraints and guardrails on these developments before it’s too late.
Jeffrey Singer / Buckingham Street, Cambridge
A stronger
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I’m sorry but I could not put in words how much I disagree with this letter. “Destroying the neighborhoods”?!! How is having slightly taller buildings destroying YOUR neighborhood? Please be specific. “Hurting the environment”? Living car free life in a taller multi unit blueing is the best that for the environment. “ spent decades of their lives as good neighbors” – ahh there it is. Reads like “I got mine, everyone else go away”
People needing homes outweigh aesthetic preferences, full stop.
Cambridge’s “character” should not be preserved at the cost of excluding people and driving up prices. History is not erased by adding housing. Cities evolve, and that evolution is what keeps them accessible and alive. Cambridge has continually changed over decades. Why do people think they can hit “pause” once they are here?
Invoking parking requirements and limiting development size only entrenches scarcity and makes housing less affordable. If we are serious about environmental goals, we should support dense, transit-oriented housing, not mandate more cars. Build more housing where jobs are and people won’t need to drive as much.
The real threat to Cambridge’s future is not new buildings. It is the exclusion of people who can no longer afford to live here and a callousness that prioritizes personal tastes over the fundamental needs of others.
Prioritizing parking over people is the wrong approach.
Urban planners largely agree that too much parking makes cities worse. It encourages more driving, adds to congestion, and drives up housing costs by taking up valuable space.
If we want better cities, we need to reduce reliance on cars, not make them more convenient. And in Cambridge, nearly half of residents don’t regularly use a car anyway. For many people, parking isn’t essential, it’s just a convenience.
At the end of the day, homes for people matter more than storage for cars.
I think it might be relevant for Jeffrey Singer of Buckingham Street, Cambridge to let us know how large and expensive their home is when they want to make it harder for others to live here.
Your specific suggestion seems in contradiction with the rest of your letter. I don’t think anyone believes that parking contributes meaningfully to Cambridge’s history or character, and mandating a certain amount of parking is contrary to the goals of protecting the environment and green spaces.
I agree… Cambridge has changed a LOT in the now nearly 30 years that I have lived here… if all we do is build taller buildings that act as a way to store human beings without character, just masses of glass and concrete, they we become nothing more than a modern brutalism in architecture, a giant heat sink that slowly drains life away, and a loss of all the local businesses, gathering places, free venues and things to experience that brought us here. Luxury flats and warehousing seems to be the two options we are being offered to cram more people in… ignoring that we have now spent significant time in a drought state with inadequate means of storing water, and insufficient electricity in the long term to power the governor’s unfortunate encouragement of data centers both here and across the state.
We don’t want to be a suburb of Boston, just another collection of slowly rising high rises across the river.
I invited the reader to look up what Buckingham Street looks like, observe that the author values movie set surroundings over more housing for the characters of the neighborhood, and draw their own conclusions.
What’s being built in Cambridge isn’t “brutalist warehousing.” It’s modest mid-rise buildings with active ground floors. This is standard urban fabric, not a dystopian shift. That kind of framing is pure NIMBY hyperbole.
More density supports local businesses. More residents means more customers. It is also more efficient. Denser housing reduces per-capita energy use, water use, and car dependence, which cuts pollution and congestion.
If we don’t build, demand doesn’t disappear. It drives up prices and pushes people out. Moderate density in a transit-rich city is exactly what keeps Cambridge economically and socially viable.
yes, Cambridge has character. Yes, it has different neighborhoods. Yes, its its a great place to live.
I am sorry all the people piling on the author missed their chance to buy a place to live in Cambridge. Maybe you can buy a place in Brockton or Lowell as the next up and coming place. They offer a lot of place available at very affordable prices there. Sorry you cant always get what you always want.
This city does not need any more affordable housing.
The people who live in Cambridge in affordable housing, have affordable housing. Perhaps there are some families who have a few too many people living in an apartment, and they need additional affordable housing. Fine, let’s give it to them.
However, this city does not need any more people coming to live here. The city is extremely dense, its infrastructure is falling apart, its city services are strained and it has a significant ongoing fiscal problem.
Taxes have increased substantially during the past ten years. Many in the economic middle class have been forced out of the city because of it, and many more will be forced out in the next five years because of further substantial tax increases. The city will be less diverse.
Stop trying to bring in new people. We already have enough.
@Old Boy taxes are not the primary driver for the middle class leaving Cambridge, it’s the cost of housing.
Ten years ago, the property tax rate was higher than it is today. The amount of taxes paid has almost doubled (except for Condos, which have only seen a ~33% increase in tax levied).
I’m sure there are a few people who owned their home that felt squeezed out by the extra $300/month over 10 years, but it’s definitely not the primary mover.
Two-thirds of Cantabrigians rent, and rent has gone up by ~$1400/month for a two bedroom over that same period.
The cost of housing is way more of a factor in people leaving than taxes going up.
Cambridge isn’t “full.” It’s failing to house the people who already depend on it, and insisting we “don’t need” more affordable housing is exactly how you turn a diverse city into a gated enclave for the already-comfortable.
Cambridge’s daytime population is far larger than its resident population because tens of thousands of people work and study here but can’t afford to live here. Those teachers, lab techs, grad students, service workers, and hospital staff don’t vanish because you declare the city “full” – they just get pushed farther out, with longer commutes and higher regional rents. That’s not sustainability; it’s exclusion.
Cities are not static museums for current property owners. Cambridge’s economy, universities, and hospitals rely on a continuous inflow of new people; without that, the tax base shrinks and services worsen, not improve. The choice isn’t “no new people” versus “too many new people.” It’s between:
A high-opportunity city that plans for growth, builds enough housing – including deeply affordable homes – and keeps working- and middle-class residents in town.
Or a rich enclave that walls itself off, freezes housing supply, and then feigns surprise when only the wealthiest can stay.
Saying “no more affordable housing” in the middle of a housing crisis isn’t fiscal prudence. It’s a demand to ration access to opportunity and dress it up as “density” and “infrastructure” to make it sound respectable.
@ Henry,
If, as you say, ” It’s failing to house the people who already depend on it”,
why does the waiting list for affordable housing, a waiting list which is huge, include people who do not work here. Have that waiting list only for teachers, police etc. who work here.
@cwec Yes, The cost of housing. has gone up substantially. In contrast to your “ten years ago the tax rate was higher than it is today”, I would offer that in the last five years, the tax rate for residents has increased by 14%. Couple this with the significant increase in the assessed value (and add in the continuing large increase in maintenance), and you have the reason why so many economically middle class families have left. Review the tax rolls, as I have, and you will see signicant turnover of houses selling for 750,000 to 1.5 million.
74-foot buildings are not slightly taller than what’s there. And they’re not modest mid-rise buildings.
Allowing these cubes to fill their lots 5 feet from neighboring property lines, on any street in Cambridge no matter how narrow, far from transit, and with small existing buildings, is allowing nothing like has ever been built in Cambridge, Boston, or any North American city.
We have plenty of examples of modest mid-rise buildings which work very well in Cambridge: 4-story bricks with 15 to 20 foot rear setbacks. These buildings themselves would be dwarfed by the 74′ cubes that are now allowed.
At a recent City Council committee meeting, Harvard GSD professor Tim Love, who led the 2019 Envision Cambridge study, says he’s worried about the impacts of the current zoning. He points out that it could actually result in less housing getting built compared to a more moderate upzoning. The first developer to build a big cube on the block wins, and the neighboring property won’t get developed to its full potential because nobody would want to live 5 feet from a giant box.
So even if you don’t care about the existing neighbors because you think they’re rich or something, the current zoning is very short-sighted if the goal is to build a lot more housing.
NIMBYs offer impossible, impractical “solutions” designed to block progress, not fix anything.
1. Restricting Cambridge’s affordable housing waitlist to people who work here would gut the program and violate federal fair housing law
2. The tax argument undercuts your own position. If middle-class families are being priced out by rising carrying costs, that’s a case for adding supply — especially smaller, denser units with lower assessed values and lower tax bills — not for blocking the upzoning that would let that supply get built.
3. Congratulations on finding one professor who agrees with you. They prrobably own a house in Cambridge and likely not an unbiased observer.
However, virtually every other housing economist agrees: the only fix for a supply-driven housing crisis is more supply.
Every “fix” NIMBYs propose would restrict supply further. That’s exactly how we got here. It’s remarkable that anyone’s answer to a housing crisis is “let’s keep doing the thing that caused it.”