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RE: negative externalities of long-term vacancies, would a vacancy tax not also be an effective mechanism to discourage vacancies/encourage conversion?

Why does this need tax breaks then? If it truly was vacant, poor office space that would not serve office tenants, but would work well as residential if converted, the building owners would already have an incentive to convert. Subsidizing it admits that it doesn't actually make sense to...

If vacancies stay high, office leases would just get cheaper and attract more tenants from the suburbs, no? Low-density suburban office park vacancies could be redeveloped into medium-density housing, improving land use efficiency. As opposed to office-to-resi conversion, which would keep...

I never really got the obsession with office-to-residential conversions. I was always under the impression that dense, centralized clusters of office buildings like downtown Boston are one of the best ways to boost transit ridership by making a larger percentage of commutes viable on transit...

Is there a plan to eventually extend the curbs out to where the flex posts are? Maybe they'd add curb cuts and a crosswalk for access then

I don't know if it's even isolated to the Western world, or if it's a problem in the way you describe. I was reading this study that had an interesting conclusion: Now, I haven't dug into the methodology to see if it's really a robust analysis, but it does point to a curious idea that people...

I am continually amazed that projects like that pencil out in New Rochelle but not in Boston. Maybe it has something to do with IZ reqs that are 10% of units @ 80% AMI instead of 20% of units @ 60-70% AMI...

Single-family residential? Seriously?

Or a strategically located bike rental shop!

I'm totally with you that it looks like a net positive! It just feels performative because there is SO much more that could be done for VMT reduction... We're not even doing pilot studies on VMT-based taxes like a lot of other states.

My reading of this was that it is focused on transportation policy/planning, not land use or tax policy, where a huge amount of the possible VMT reduction is hiding.

This legislature needs to get its head out of its ass. We don't need a council to figure out what to do. The studies have already been done! https://www.mapc.org/resource-library/vehicle-miles-traveled-emissions/ The answer is 1) TOD and 2) internalizing the cost of driving on drivers. Pretty...

Are you aware of some more recent reporting that I'm not? I was under the impression it was moving forward subject to a May funding deadline. https://mass.streetsblog.org/2026/02/04/city-of-boston-restarts-rutherford-avenue-design-as-funding-deadline-looms

Mhm, and Rutherford Ave is famously not getting any kind of road diet in the near future that would decrease the number of lanes

Just to clarify: the proposed building was considered too suburban for the surrounding neighborhood, not the other way around.

I'm aware that the diversity lottery is only a small portion of visas, but it really shouldn't be any portion. Every immigrant increases the diversity of the U.S.; we don't need to be a perfect microcosm of the world population. If we are going to restrict immigration, we should be selecting for...

Fair point! I was approaching the immigration question from a national lens since that's where any legislation affecting it would come from, but for Boston in particular, NBC is quoting 38% foreign-born in 1850, 29% as of 2021. Wikipedia has Massachusetts at 18% in 2023. I don't know about...

I think the difference is that right now in the U.S., we have the highest % foreign-born population that we have ever had in this country, surpassing that of the 1920s and 30s. And that's WITH all the hurdles we've put in place to curb immigration. I don't know if there's one "correct" maximum...

Are you sure this is the same building? It looks to be proposed on the corner of Rindge and ... Rindge? (in red), while the phase 2 building render in the second image is in the Fresh Pond Apartments parking lot (in blue).

No provisions for a bike path connection to the Cochituate Rail Trail? The existing condition with sharrows on a 4-lane road is not exactly adequate.