Attend Cambridge meetings from Aug. 25

Jun 05, 2023

by Marc Levy | Aug 25, 2023 | News | 3 comments

These are just some of the municipal meetings and civic events for the coming week. More are on the City Calendar and in the city’s Open Meetings Portal.

A parking garage with room to spare. (Photo: quangnaruto via Pixabay)

Household hazardous waste collection day, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday. Accepted items at a collection at the 65 Waverly St. parking lot, in the Area II/MIT area by Cambridgeport, include such things as batteries (vehicle and non-alkaline); car fluids including antifreeze, brake, engine degreaser and transmission; car tires (a maximum of four per household); chemicals including cleaners, glues, removers and those used for photography and in swimming pools; fluorescent light bulbs; mercury items including thermometers and thermostats; paints, both oil-based and latex; poisons such as insecticides, pesticides and weed killers; prescription medicines (which are also accepted year-round by Cambridge police); propane cylinders (20 pounds or less only); and waste fuels including antifreeze, gasoline, kerosene, Sterno and motor oil.

Planning Board, 6:30 p.m. Tuesday. The board returns to discuss proposed changes to an Affordable Housing Overlay after conversation that began Aug. 8. The change to zoning would allow 100-percent-affordable buildings to rise to 12 stories along the city’s main corridors and to 15 stories in the squares.

The board would also hear a request from the owner of three Kendall Square residential properties to let spaces in its parking garages be used by the nearby Volpe project – in which the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is developing land around the federal Volpe transportation research agency – instead of requiring that project to build as many of its own parking areas. Equity Residential got board permission in 2015 to lower the number of parking spaces compared with units in buildings it owns at 303 Third St., 195 Binney St. and 249 Third St., then pool parking as needed. Yet the company has seen that “parking demand across the three properties has continued to decline,” leaving hundreds of spaces unused every day, according to a company filing. “This is most pronounced in the garage at 303 Third St., which, even with the pooled parking arrangement, has approximately 300 empty parking spaces on a daily basis. At 195 Binney Street, there are 186 residential units, but only 72 parking spaces within the garage are leased to residents,” the company said. Until MIT starts using the parking in 2026, the empty parking spaces could be used by Boston Properties, which is tearing down its 1,136-space Blue Garage to put an Eversource substation underground.

Watchable by Zoom videoconferencing.

The problem of overbuilt parking is only going to become more and more pronounced. Eliminating parking requirements was a good first step. The city should now establish both individual project and city wide parking maximums and actively plan to make both numbers smaller over time.

Would be smart to develop policy to encourage reuse or redevelopment of parking garages and other parking space, which is difficult and expensive. There are some really interesting examples around the world. Paris especially seems to be experimenting a lot on how to do this.

“The city should now establish both individual project and city wide parking maximums and actively plan to make both numbers smaller over time.”

Why?

Because there is limited space in cities and there are so many better things to fill it with than parking (housing, parks, stores and restaurants, social services, etc). Aka it’s a simple question of geometry and the less space we have for parking the more space we have for the things that actually makes urban life great.

Also because we are in a climate crisis and we have corresponding goals at every level to shift away from private automobiles as the center of our mobility strategy and we should reflect that in our zoning and built form.

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