Cambridge Infill and Small Developments

FK4 said:
I mean, I know this street well. I completely understand why anyone living on it would not want this huge hulking building smushed into their hood. I also think the only way out of preventing us from becoming a complete failure due to impossible cost of living is aggressive change on this scale. But it doesn’t mean that it’s pretty and it doesn’t mean the people who complain about it are being unreasonable. Ellery is a small, residential street. I can’t imagine owning a home here and suddenly having to deal with this in my backyard.
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I also know this street well, and you've also already got this down the street and this around the corner, and the site is kitty corner to CRLS and effectively on Broadway. It's larger than what was there, but not really out of character with what should be there. If it were something more akin to what's at 295 Harvard St, I would agree more, but as proposed Im totally fine with it. This part of mid Cambridge really should be replacing some of its older housing stock with more of these.
 
FK4 said:
I mean, I know this street well. I completely understand why anyone living on it would not want this huge hulking building smushed into their hood. I also think the only way out of preventing us from becoming a complete failure due to impossible cost of living is aggressive change on this scale. But it doesn’t mean that it’s pretty and it doesn’t mean the people who complain about it are being unreasonable. Ellery is a small, residential street. I can’t imagine owning a home here and suddenly having to deal with this in my backyard.
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This is one way to salve that burn, I guess (8 Ellery price history). I do get that it can be jarring when neighborhoods change quickly, but the status quo of enriching people who sit on aging housing stock and cash out while no one else has a place to live was really problematic. Aesthetics aside, Cambridge made the tough but correct choice of upzoning city wide. They could have done more to focus on the main thoroughfares or whatever, but they passed clear zoning regs so this is going to happen citywide. Ultimately it's just a better outcome than the alternatives.



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Justbuildit said:
This is one way to salve that burn, I guess (8 Ellery price history). I do get that it can be jarring when neighborhoods change quickly, but the status quo of enriching people who sit on aging housing stock and cash out while no one else has a place to live was really problematic. Aesthetics aside, Cambridge made the tough but correct choice of upzoning city wide. They could have done more to focus on the main thoroughfares or whatever, but they passed clear zoning regs so this is going to happen citywide. Ultimately it's just a better outcome than the alternatives.



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Unfortunately its not clear the upzoning will survive if the Cambridge council election changes, there's a large number of repeal candidates.
 
Stlin said:
I also know this street well, and you've also already got this down the street and this around the corner, and the site is kitty corner to CRLS and effectively on Broadway. It's larger than what was there, but not really out of character with what should be there. If it were something more akin to what's at 295 Harvard St, I would agree more, but as proposed Im totally fine with it. This part of mid Cambridge really should be replacing some of its older housing stock with more of these.
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You’re refuting something I didn’t say! Not saying I disagree with it being built, but I am saying that it doesn’t fit in gracefully and that I feel for anyone who lives on that street. I could pick any residential street around Coolidge Corner and say the same thing, despite the fact that, yes, you could show me pictures of giant apartment buildings that are scattered around there too. In any case, I support projects like these, but there is a loss of fabric that exists and we collectively are going to have to get a lot more used to a lot more loss if this region is to be liveable. They’re simply is no way to preserve the low density, and quintessentially Boston-charming, neighborhoods that exist today u less we want them to be museums.
 
I just don't understand that sentiment when the local context for most of Harvard St and its environs are 5-6 story brick apt buildings that go up to the lot line. Quibble with the style of this new building, but the size and envelope are what is normal for that area of Cambridge.
 
393b40 said:
Unfortunately its not clear the upzoning will survive if the Cambridge council election changes, there's a large number of repeal candidates.
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Unfortunately, the way this process is legislated, it doesn't really matter what we think or what is good policy. What matters is what can survive and hopefully endure politically. There is a long history of towns/cities repealing or drastically scaling back upzoning initiatives when they are perceived to be too generous or when they are especially successful in attracting development (see Lexington).

If Cambridge needs to make some tweaks to keep this from getting cannibalized, i.e. reducing height to 5 stories in some residential areas or reasonable architectural requirements, I'm all for it.

lexobserver.org

Town Meeting votes to scale back multifamily zoning

Town Meeting passed Article 2 with overwhelming support. An amendment to include Lexington Center in the zoning bylaw failed.
lexobserver.org lexobserver.org
 
as02143 said:
A small (almost country road-like) residential street that has one of the busiest subway lines in the U.S. running underneath one end of the street?
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Not sure what you’re trying to do here; Ellery, Dana, and Trowbridge are all streets that fit the description I gave. The “end of the street” argument could be made for any number of similar roads in JP with respect to the Orange Line. It’s called a neighborhood, which can change quickly.

curcuas said:
I just don't understand that sentiment when the local context for most of Harvard St and its environs are 5-6 story brick apt buildings that go up to the lot line. Quibble with the style of this new building, but the size and envelope are what is normal for that area of Cambridge.
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I don’t see why this is hard to understand—walk down this street and it feels far away from Harvard. That’s exactly why many people live on streets like this, and there are many of them especially in the Boston area, which have a particular atmosphere given the fact that they feel quite quiet and residential yet are situated very close to action and density. Not everyone wants to live on a busy, dense, overbuilt street, hence the housing situation we find ourselves in today. Good policy needs to override those viewpoints, yes, but that is a different matter altogether than being surprised or finding the individual concerns of people who don’t embrace the change that you’d like to see as unreasonable. People resist change and it’s not always unreasonable that they do, or why they do.
 
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It's not hard to understand that people want really nice super-privileged scalable-y unrealistic stuff like this:
FK4 said:
...a particular atmosphere given the fact that they feel quite quiet and residential yet are situated very close to action and density...
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From an "of course people want nice stuff" standpoint, it is not "unreasonable"
From pretty much every other standpoint, it is unreasonable.

I think that sums it up.
 
Jorge Almazán's book, Emergent Tokyo, describes the relationship between dense, high-rise "zakkyo" (miscellaneous) buildings full of activity and so-called "pocket" neighborhoods, low-rise, walkable streets that remain leafy and quiet even though they're only a block or two away. It seems Tokyo has stumbled into a form of zoning that offers the best of both worlds. The housing crisis is so bad that building is needed now. However, I also lament the loss of these kinds of streets and wonder if there are lessons to draw from places like Tokyo that would allow us, over time, to break out of an either/or binary, so we can offer people what they want and need.
 
bigpicture7 said:
It's not hard to understand that people want really nice super-privileged scalable-y unrealistic stuff like this:


From an "of course people want nice stuff" standpoint, it is not "unreasonable"
From pretty much every other standpoint, it is unreasonable.

I think that sums it up.
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This is veering into other thread territory, but I think that's not a helpful attitude and it's one that we collectively contribute to on here too often. There's nothing "super-privileged" about people not wanting change; that's just the way most people are and it's not crazy to want one's neighborhood to stay the same as it was when one moved there. Very few people are going to embrace having a six story building built next to their one- or two-family home, and there's nothing wrong with that. We don't have to belittle perfectly normal and human wants and desires to justify the much-needed policy decisions that override those things. Individuals want one thing, and government (ideally) exists to balance the needs of the individual against the needs of society overall. I think like so much in the present, condescension gets dragged into debates where it is unwarranted.
 
Its definitely an interesting topic--but I think the notion of a city and a suburb are different things. A city is something that until recently was something that was understood to be a place of change, growth, etc. whereas when you're looking for a SFH you're "buying the neighborhood" as much as you are buying the house. The problem with a city is we are all reliant on each other in terms of these massive coordination problems like the housing market so when someone has decided that the city was great the day they moved there and shouldn't 'grow up' (to the detriment of renters), I think people who aren't incumbents are gonna be increasingly angered by that, because I think in a city your right to the built environment doesn't really extend further than your lot lines.
 
Longfellow said:
Its definitely an interesting topic--but I think the notion of a city and a suburb are different things. A city is something that until recently was something that was understood to be a place of change, growth, etc. whereas when you're looking for a SFH you're "buying the neighborhood" as much as you are buying the house. The problem with a city is we are all reliant on each other in terms of these massive coordination problems like the housing market so when someone has decided that the city was great the day they moved there and shouldn't 'grow up' (to the detriment of renters), I think people who aren't incumbents are gonna be increasingly angered by that, because I think in a city your right to the built environment doesn't really extend further than your lot lines.
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That perspective is particularly muddy in places like Camberville though. As much as they are cities, they're also transitional - they span the urban / suburb divide. One town out, Belmont, Arlington and Miltons etc, are definitely suburbs. But until recently the same could be said of the "inner suburbs" of Camberville and JP etc, when SFH housing prices outside the squares weren't too far off the better burbs, buying in Camberville was a lifestyle choice - buying the "pocket" neighborhood, in your parlance. Brookline is the prime example of this locally. As the density pushes out from the urban core, its bound to have some pernicious impacts on neighborhoods. Lower income ones call it gentrification, and most have some sympathy for that - its literally the problem from the pixar movie UP. Here in this part Cambridge? its whatever you'd call the upper middle class version of gentrification as these neighborhoods densify, and those pockets shrink. At the end of the day, these are much needed - we can't be a country that sits on the old as good enough, continual progress and renewal needs to happen. and so when houses no longer serve the needs of the population... change is inevitable, but I do agree it's in the public interest to have both. Back Bay and Bay Village aren't mutually exclusive, but are complementary.
 
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FK4 said:
This is veering into other thread territory, but I think that's not a helpful attitude and it's one that we collectively contribute to on here too often. There's nothing "super-privileged" about people not wanting change; that's just the way most people are and it's not crazy to want one's neighborhood to stay the same as it was when one moved there. Very few people are going to embrace having a six story building built next to their one- or two-family home, and there's nothing wrong with that. We don't have to belittle perfectly normal and human wants and desires to justify the much-needed policy decisions that override those things. Individuals want one thing, and government (ideally) exists to balance the needs of the individual against the needs of society overall. I think like so much in the present, condescension gets dragged into debates where it is unwarranted.
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FK, I agree with what you're saying: that the reaction is understandable, and that we shouldn't be shocked to see it. In fact, it should be expected and not demonized, however right or wrong. My reply wasn't meant to negate yours, it was meant to be a pragmatic acknowledgement of this effect.

This said though, people not being able to recognize their own privilege is in fact a substantive challenge for society...
And feeling like one's own situation is an exceptional case where immunity to change should be conferred is, IMO, an ultimate manifestation of entitlement: it is a definition of super-privilege. To test this assertion, flip it around: un-privileged people are those who are very much subject to, and not shielded from, the whipsaw of change.

So, again, I agree with you that the reaction is normal, expected, to be "worked with" as part of this social system...
AND, the reaction of "don't subject me to any change" is an expression or privilege. Quite frankly, to be shielded from change is an ultimate luxury.
 
View attachment 68435
Great new project on a long dead parking lot near Porter (1740 Mass. Ave)! If anyone has time they should go speak in favor Monday night! (Also sorry I don't know how to upload the image so it appears in the post instead of as a link).
 

68 Units Planned in Cambridge's Wellington-Harrington Neighborhood​

“The proposed development at 16–28 Porter Street reimagines a series of underutilized parcels within the Wellington-Harrington neighborhood as a new 68-unit multi-family building with a mix of unit types and including 13 affordable homes…..”


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68 Units Planned in Cambridge's Wellington-Harrington Neighborhood

68 Units Planned in Cambridge's Wellington-Harrington Neighborhood
www.bldup.com www.bldup.com
 
This is right around the corner from The Verge development at 16-20 Medford Street that is just finishing up

stick n move said:

68 Units Planned in Cambridge's Wellington-Harrington Neighborhood​

“The proposed development at 16–28 Porter Street reimagines a series of underutilized parcels within the Wellington-Harrington neighborhood as a new 68-unit multi-family building with a mix of unit types and including 13 affordable homes…..”


16_porter.png


68 Units Planned in Cambridge's Wellington-Harrington Neighborhood

68 Units Planned in Cambridge's Wellington-Harrington Neighborhood
www.bldup.com www.bldup.com
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