"Change moves at the speed of trust” is a maxim attributed to the author Stephen Cove. It best captures Mayor Michelle Wu’s laudatory goal, yet challenge, in updating Boston’s zoning code. There is a long history of distrust in the City’s planning and development processes by neighborhood groups that is born of decades of experience whereby developers demonstrated their power to overrule the zoning code to serve their interests. Historically, given how mayors secure taxes in Boston, the developers’ interests have often aligned with the mayors’ budgetary interests, at the expense of neighborhood residents.

The zoning regulations that Wu is currently advocating is called Squares + Streets, an initiative mainly focused on business districts and nearby neighborhoods that seeks to increase housing density as well as promote small businesses and arts and culture within designated districts. The proposal envisions a short planning process of six to nine months for Squares + Streets districts. It has been a very contentious process, with community civic groups advocating for delays to work out issues of concern, and the mayor and Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA) Director Arthur Jemison saying that they’ll work out any problems during the process of implementing the new regulations. “Trust us.”

Wu ran for mayor in 2021 largely on changing how development happens in Boston. In 2019, she published a 76-page document as chair of the City Council’s Committee on Planning, Development & Transportation entitled “Fixing Boston’s Broken Development Process: Why and How to Abolish the BPDA.” The document’s introduction states that our “neighborhoods [are] transformed by an onslaught of zoning variances and special approvals,” and that “the BPDA gives concentrated control over development to the mayor of Boston with little to no accountability, giving well-connected developers outsized access to influence decision-making and incentivizing an unhealthy political interdependence.”

The document is an excellent primer on how development happens in Boston and discusses the failures and opportunities with respect to a reform of the process. Critical to Wu’s strategy is the creation of a Planning Department to do master planning, thereby avoiding “a hodgepodge of piecemeal measures with the potential for abuse: zoning variances issued by the Zoning Board of Appeal (ZBA) and Planned Development Areas (PDA) approved by the BPDA Board.”

The document is very critical of the ZBA, stating that it “serves as the city’s de facto planning body, the stakes of each vote are high enough to incentivize corruption,” and “through exceptions to zoning granted by the ZBA … these special approvals drive up land values for specific parcels through a haphazard process and promote speculation by developers who aim to leverage influence to capitalize on investments.”
It further states that “without comprehensive planning and zoning to set clear, community-informed rules for development, Boston is setting citywide development policy through case-by-case exceptions.”

Most civic activists will tell you that the ZBA is the most frustrating department they deal with in City Hall, and that its actions devalue community participation. A very high percentage of projects require variances, which leads to a process whereby abutters and community residents review the plans for suitability in their communities. Communities often have near unanimity opposing granting variances for developments based on reasonable concerns, but they are then unanimously approved by the ZBA. This leaves community residents bewildered at their powerlessness, and a commonly held belief that developers control City Hall, which is a major source of distrust in the development process.

With that in mind, it was a surprise to me that Wu decided to largely ignore the reform of the ZBA in favor of proposing Squares + Streets as her foray into zoning reform. Allowing the ZBA to continue to define the values of properties and override the wishes of communities was not a good way to ask for community support for changes in zoning.

Community suspicion that nothing was changing in the parcel-by-parcel development process that leads to repugnant ZBA decisions has resulted in a reluctance to support a major change in zoning such as Squares + Streets, even if many of the proposed changes make sense.

The mayor often points out that the last time there was zoning reform was 1965 and that our code is thousands of pages, far in excess of what exists in other cities. She states regularly that it is nearly impossible to build a “triple decker” today because the code forbids them without variances.

But in some sections of Boston, three-deckers are regularly being demolished in favor of 8-12 unit condo buildings. Dorchester’s Pearl Street has become an emblem for such development, where appropriately zoned 1-3 family houses are being bulldozed for condo development. Neighbors on nearby streets have great fear that the ZBA will just continue to allow variances that result in demolition of the remaining 1-3 family buildings in favor of condo developments, which in parts of Dorchester is referred to as the Southbostonization of the neighborhood. These overbuilt structures clash with the remaining houses on the street, making a statement about poor urban design, and letting residents see them as harbingers for additional demolitions. One such new building on Pearl Street is locally referred to as “the monstrosity.”

Squares + Streets has prompted the BPDA to look to greatly expand the number of people engaged in the planning and review processes for new developments, including increasing the numbers of renters, residents of public housing, and others to be involved in reviewing development proposals, which sounds like a good idea. If this is the case, the City must invest in an extensive training program for people to understand the development process.

I’ve been involved in civic activism for over 50 years and still know precious little about the regulations that guide this process. Community activists, overwhelmingly volunteers, cannot be expected to successfully engage with the lawyers and architects employed by the developers, which is perhaps a reason why communities are overruled so often.

When I was growing up in New Jersey, there was a saying for this type of thing – it’s called bringing a knife to a gun fight.

In her 2019 document, Wu stated the following: “The stakes of each vote [of the ZBA] are high enough to incentivize corruption.” With the price of housing approaching among the highest in the US, the ability to get a zoning variance in Boston to turn a single family house into a four-unit condo development can make the developer very rich, very quickly. Yet the rules that guide the ZBA in making such decisions are murky at best – they incentivize corruption. And the adoption of Squares + Streets is unlikely to significantly reduce the number of projects going to the ZBA, which has bred distrust in the system for planning and development.

The mayor should not be surprised that the distrust of the BPDA and the development process has created consternation toward Squares + Streets, despite its positive attributes. She wrote about her own distrust in 2019, and change does move at the speed of trust. Reform the ZBA and create community engaged comprehensive planning for neighborhoods and perhaps Boston’s activists will feel a lot more trusting.