BREAKING: Over 100 Massachusetts cities & towns have now passed zoning reform to allow for multi-family housing near transit in compliance* with their MBTA Communities Law requirements. (*subject to final approval)
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There’s been some analysis on this and I know Amy has done some writing on the subject. There are certainly two camps of communities in this compliance process but I don’t know if anyone has a comprehensive list just yet.
It seems like something that wouldn't be impossible to quantify but might be hard to collect the right data. @maxwellpalmer.bsky.social and @katherineeinst.bsky.social have you guys thought about paper compliance measures?
You'd have to try and set guardrails around an analysis but I think you could quantify it with a lot of due diligence and time. Lots of communities chose districts that already had some dense housing (or condos) knowing replacement costs would never pencil to build to full density.
Then I'd look at other things like min lot sizes, excessive open space requirements (500sf/unit is prohibitive to build on most infill sites) or extreme parking requirements (Marblehead's 2 "exterior" spaces to 1 unit makes most parcels in their proposed districts infeasible to build on...
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