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The triple decker is Boston's iconic architecture; our historic "missing middle" housing, first built en masse to house Boston's growing working class & has served generations of families since. But if you live in any of the areas in red it is illegal to build in your area today.
Caveat: The red areas in my map illustrate Boston's single family and two-family zoning districts. Also, even though you can *technically* build a three-decker in, say, Beacon Hill, you're unlikely to see one.
Also, I don't believe that the three-decker is the be-all and end-all. We have such a huge lack of housing for our local and regional demand that we need to build lots more affordable and multi-family housing beyond just three units at a time.
But I intend for this map to illustrate how out of wack our zoning structure is for our need. Why is it that areas like Roxbury feel so much pressure to build, but other areas like West Roxbury are basically off limits?
As we talk about the important goal of enshrining equity into our zoning, it's important to stress that equity also means making sure that our zoning doesn't effectively create gated communities around ANY Boston neighborhood.
And, at a very minimum, we should increase equity in Boston zoning by ensuring that developments with 100% below market rate units should be permitted by right, without the time and cost-consuming zoning variance process, in EVERY Boston neighborhood.
People asked me to expand this map to include more communities in the Boston urban core. See results below. Again, red indicates areas where the iconic three decker is NOT allowed by right under CURRENT zoning. @BostML @BHellerstein @kschwarz1116
This revision includes: Boston, Cambridge, Brookline, and Newton. Chelsea does not have a publicly accessible zoning district GIS layer available. Somerville effectively eliminated single family zoning in their recent citywide rezoning effort.
In addition, I have not taken into account any zoning *overlay* districts which may exists to allow things like multifamily affordable housing in single family zones (i.e., I have a GIS layer from Brookline called "zoning overlay" but I have not analyzed it yet).
Despite my caveats above, I think the map continues to show how we have effectively zoned multifamily housing - including the iconic three decker which was a traditional source of affordable family housing for generations - out of much/most of the Boston regions inner core.
