How Upzoning in Cambridge Broke the YIMBY Mold | By making buildings up to four floors legal by right across the city, the hometown of Harvard and MIT has set a new benchmark for the abundant housing movement

there was a short article about this in the sub when it first passed, but I think a few extra weeks gives time for more detailed contextualizations and I think this CityLab article counts imo:

# The stage

> For years, the affluent Boston suburb has been one of the epicenters of the US affordable housing crisis. Home to Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the city of 118,000 offers a mix of grand historic homes, traditional New England “triple-deckers” and modest apartment buildings for students and locals. As gorgeous as it is, there just aren’t enough homes: The average rent in Cambridge runs to $3,375 a month, according to Zillow, 69% higher than the US average and outpacing rents in similar higher-ed enclaves such as Berkeley, California. Housing restrictions are so tight that over the next 15 years, the city had expected to build just 350 units. Cambridge added so few new homes in 2023 that you can count them on one hand — five units total.

# The win

> So when the city council passed a new zoning reform earlier this month that allows property owners and developers to build up to four stories, by right, citywide — with an option for an additional two stories on top — Cambridge leapfrogged other localities that have eased restrictions on apartment buildings.

> Where progressive bids by other cities have made it possible to build six to 12 units on an average-sized lot, Cambridge just legalized buildings that will accommodate close to four dozen households.

> “We’re really rezoning for six stories in the whole city,” says Cambridge City Council member Burhan Azeem, who describes it as “the most comprehensive citywide rezoning” in the entire US.

> Developers can now construct apartment buildings up to 75 feet tall in neighborhoods that were previously restricted to single-family homes. The change is “monumental on a national scale,” according to Jesse Kanson-Benanav, executive director of the nonprofit Abundant Housing MA.

# NIMBY malding lmao

> the plan also generated substantial pushback from residents, who feared that it would lack design oversight, neglect historic preservation and invite outside investors. A local organization called the Cambridge Citizen Coalition described it as a “luxury upzoning” rooted in “disaster capitalism.”

# National context

> California has long set the pace for the YIMBY movement to permit more housing construction. Elsewhere, cities such as Austin, Minneapolis and New York made long strides to catch up, with recent reforms allowing duplexes, for example, or opening up residential development near transit stations. Montana even passed a statewide zoning package in 2023. But none of those efforts compares to the local impact that Cambridge just signed into law: Whereas the city previously guessed it would build 350 net units by 2040, now it’s estimating 4,880 units, the majority of which made possible by the new neighborhood-level reforms.

> That’s 5,000 potential units for a city of roughly 50,000 homes over a relatively short time span. New York’s “City of Yes” proposal, by contrast, aims to unlock 80,000 homes — an ambitious figure given the challenges, for sure, but a drop in the bucket for a metropolis of 8.3 million.

> Even with these compromises, what developers can do in Cambridge going forward dwarfs what other cities have passed. Azeem illustrates the point by outlining the number of units legally permitted on a hypothetical 11,000-square-foot lot in other jurisdictions. In Arlington, Virginia, where county lawmakers voted to end single-family zoning in 2023, it’s legal to build up to six units, but only for a max of 58 permits per year. (The law is currently tied up in courts.) Reforms in Minneapolis and Gainesville, Florida, made it possible to build three units on any lot. (The latter was later repealed.) In Berkeley, lawmakers are weighing change to allow up to 12 units, albeit in buildings under 28 feet in height.

!ping YIMBY

It’s actually fucking insane to me how building 4 floors is controversial in America. Over Asia they’re fine with 40 floors in the middle of nowhere and start having concerns when it becomes 50

Edit: to be clear I said in the middle of nowhere because building high in city centers is a given.