Recent content by Blackbird

The demand for housing is much higher in LA than Boston. I mean, even if the metro went fully YIMBY and agreed to essentially eliminate all zoning everywhere within 495 and put the whole area on a massive street grid, do you really think we’d become LA within a year or two? New England is the...

Density is usually measured in people per area. How are SFHs not denser than woodland given that definition? And who says I’m talking about mansions? Two connected homes surrounded by forest will house fewer people than 5 disjointed houses on small lots. But isn’t that what we want? On the...

Exhibit A as to why Greater Boston has a housing crisis, everybody! Nothing will ever get better in terms of the cost of living until this kind of thinking dies. Or maybe we just let Weston keep its trees and let Waltham become Kowloon because that’s where density already exists and where it...

It might be a limitation of the footprint. Current Matthew’s Arena has the rink and seats taking up most of the stretch between Mass Ave and Gainsborough with only a little bit on the Mass Ave side dedicated to concessions. Likewise, there’s maybe a little bit of room between the arena and St...

It’s not “sprawling out” if it’s filling-in gaps. This is a form of densification, just a different kind from the “what if we put a 20-unit apt building on the old superfund site” way that were used to in MA. Edit: I feel like I should add some more context to this since (a) I feel pretty...

Haven’t been able to circle back to this in a while, but I do think I’ve found a good case study for how one-way-in/one-way-out development is strangling the commonwealth: English Commons is such a development in Topsfield right after the split between route 1 and I-95 as it heads up to...

Thank God for this one. I was really getting down on Harley for doing next to nothing on housing during her tenure (and for supporting mass deportation). I’ll believe it when I see it, but this report is at least something nice to chew on and a step in the right direction. An oxymoron.

Why are we posting pictures of Washington DC in an ArchBoston thread? :unsure: :censored:

I’d at least push it back to the year Milkweed opened on Tremont: 2017.

Boston could never. But hey, being able to legally move your mother-in-law into the tool shed out back is basically as big a housing win as by-right multifamily, no?

Tear it down.

Is it more attractive? I wouldn’t want to live on a dead end, but maybe that’s just me. I like having a little network of roads to walk around and multiple exits onto different bigger roads. And let’s step back from developers for a second and look at the towns. Even if dead-ends are...

Not a huge history, infrastructure, or public policy buff so forgive me if any of this is wildly off base! But something that’s bothered me about conversations around housing, traffic, and infrastructure and how the three inter-relate is the forgone conclusion that any new development whether...

Loved the wording shared by the earlier-posted article: “Now, the emergency regulations define subway stations as “any of the stops along the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Red Line, Green Line, Orange Line, or Blue Line, including but not limited to the Mattapan High Speed Line and...

Ah, but see it’s primarily the ambiance that I’ll miss. The pizza is fine, but sitting out in that back parking lot on a warm summer night was really great. Looks like this building will fill that whole space.