RESTORED QUEEN ANNE houses sell for more than $10m in Cambridge, a small city across the Charles River from Boston. Victorians, brick rowhouses and triple-deckers (three-storey homes, with an apartment on each floor) are all very dear. Rent is high, too. Low-income residents are decently served by public and subsidised housing. But middle-income renters and buyers are mostly locked out of finding a home in Cambridge.
That looks set to change thanks to the city council passing a bold new ordinance last month. The measure ends century-old single-family zoning and represents a significant turn in urban land use policy. It will allow six-storey residential buildings citywide, including areas where only single-family homes were permitted. Accessory dwellings, a cottage or granny flat built on the same lot as a single-family home, will also be permitted.
“Yimbys”, activists who say “yes in my backyard” to development, are thrilled to see sensible planning in one of the most dense cities in America. They argue that housing shortages are caused by overregulating what can be built and where. These rules add to costs and can discourage development. The city council deleted scores of pages of requirements.
Burhan Azeem, a council member, calls Cambridge’s reform the most comprehensive citywide zoning change in the country. The old rules were so restrictive that only 350 new units were expected to be built by 2040. Mr Azeem says the new, easier rules will encourage mid-size and smaller property developers.
The city was “becoming a barbell society,” says Mr Azeem. The poor got help and the wealthy lived well, but teachers cannot afford to live there. One former resident says he and his wife, both white-collar workers, were advised by their real-estate agent to move to the Midwest. Cambridge has one of America’s lowest rates of children as a percentage of the population because young families leave for cheaper places. “One of the biggest signs that something was going wrong,” says Mr Azeem, is “when you can’t create space for the next generation.”
Cambridge is not alone in embracing yimbyism. Christopher Elmendorf of the University of California, Davis, points to Minneapolis, America’s first major city to end single-family zoning. New development tended to be built where flats were already permitted. Mr Elmendorf thinks “in the right environment, it can totally work.” That means sound policy, good timing (tariffs on lumber and steel are bound to hurt construction) and the willingness of people to welcome change.
William Fischel, emeritus professor at Dartmouth College, is encouraged. “People are waking up to the fact that land use regulation has something to do with housing costs”. But he is worried about powerful historic conservationists. Even in the People’s Republic, Cambridge’s nickname, NIMBYs, or “not in my backyard”, locals who resist new development, may cause trouble. Many are progressive and understand there is a housing crisis, but they love the charm of their neighbourhoods.
“The minute someone tries to put a six-storey building in a residential zone that has historically been no higher than 35 feet, there’s going to be immediate negative pushback,” says David Clem, who kick-started biotech development in Cambridge’s Kendall Square (now an economic engine for the state). He predicts it will take a while before the bold move results in new housing. Mr Azeem says the historical commission can only delay projects until they do a historical study. As The Economist went to press the city council and the commission were in talks. ■
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