Greater Boston is not short on walkable, transit-served neighborhoods like the ones that Newton designated for MRT. The region is rich in places where neighbors chat on sidewalks, children walk to schools, commuters head to transit stops, and residents have convenient access to amenities. What Greater Boston lacks is enough homes in these desirable environments where car-lite and car-free mobility are possible. In a virtuous cycle, residential growth in these areas also bolsters small business and transit, making great places even better.

For decades, state and local policies have significantly steered multifamily residential development into two channels:

1. large apartment complexes on the edges of municipalities, near highways and away from historic neighborhoods;
2. and modest mixed-use buildings—housing above shops—in the historic commercial and civic centers of communities, typically on arterial roads.

The Main Street projects have met real needs for homes in walkable, transit-connected settings, but not at sufficient scale. Meanwhile, zoning has largely prohibited apartments and condos in nearby residential neighborhoods, even those just steps from libraries, cafes, pharmacies, and bus stops. The opportunity is clear, but local politics has typically avoided it.

MBTA Communities: Progress, with Limits

As documented in the Boston Indicators report, An Early Look at the MBTA Communities Permitting Pipeline, the MBTA Communities law marked a meaningful step forward by requiring cities and towns served by the MBTA to zone districts for multifamily housing as-of-right, near transit where feasible. As a result, multifamily housing is now in the permitting or construction pipeline in Newton as well as communities such as Arlington, Bedford, Belmont, and Lexington—often in walkable, transit-served locations.

Across more than 30 municipalities, the MBTA Communities pipeline now includes more than 7,000 homes in more than 100 projects. Not all of the projects are in walkable, transit-served neighborhoods, but enough are to register progress.

Newton’s MRT adaptive reuse zoning emerged from its MBTA Communities compliance package. Before the law, every multifamily proposal in Newton required City Council approval to move forward. The process was slow, expensive, and highly uncertain. The result was serious underproduction and expensive housing. Newton’s reform created three districts where condos and apartments are allowed by right (no vote of City Council needed for project approvals): Village Center Overlay Districts 1 and 2 in the commercial cores of historic centers, and MRT districts on certain adjacent residential blocks.

The MRT district covered a small subset of residential properties in walking distance of Newton’s stations and shops. In MRT, four dwelling units are allowed per property, or more when the principal structure is preserved.

Under the “Adaptive Reuse” provisions of the MRT district, the front facade must be preserved, and the original footprint of the structure can be expanded by up to 50 percent. Up to six units can be contained in the principal building. The provisions allow for multiple buildings on a lot, if they fit within setbacks. The footprints of new buildings cannot exceed 1,500 square feet; their height is capped at 2.5 stories. The new buildings have to contain at least three units and no more than four. Zoning requirements for open space are waived for adaptive reuse projects.

Today, Newton has 14 MBTA Communities–related projects in the pipeline: two in the Village Center Overlay Districts, and 12 in MRT. Eight of the 12 MRT projects involve adaptive reuse.

Why Scale Matters

Across Greater Boston, most MBTA Communities zoning districts were drawn over commercial and industrial properties. When districts were drawn over existing multifamily buildings, it was often in ways that minimized potential for new housing by legalizing what already existed. With rare exceptions, communities avoided applying the new zoning to relatively low-density residential-only neighborhoods.

Newton’s MRT districts were one such exception, albeit narrowly drawn. Somerville went further, rezoning all residential districts to allow triplexes. In one year, Somerville permitted 23 triplex projects—the highest MBTA Communities project count in any municipality. Even so, the net increase in housing remained modest.

This illustrates the core lesson: Small projects can only add up, for profound impact, if they are allowed across large areas, across many communities.

Most MBTA Communities projects are small. Of the 102 projects in the pipeline as of January 2026, 83 contained fewer than 100 units, totaling 1,608 homes and averaging just 19 units per project. By contrast, just 19 large projects, containing more than 100 units each, account for roughly 77 percent of all MBTA Communities units. These large projects include developments of 752 homes in Braintree, 520 in Westford, and 480 in Weston.

Large projects make for impressive totals, but opportunities for them in historic, walkable neighborhoods are limited. Small-scale infill opportunities, by contrast, are abundant—if zoning allows them. A housing strategy for Greater Boston must include opportunities for small, medium, and large projects.

A Statewide Opportunity for Housing Growth, without Demolition

In general, the Commonwealth can take four approaches to advance local zoning reform: persuasion, incentives, mandates, and direct changes to zoning law. MBTA Communities falls into the mandate category. It reduced local barriers to housing production, but it was an incremental step—and not an easily repeatable one. The rezoning process proved politically fraught, technically complex, expensive, and time-consuming, taking years in many communities and remaining incomplete in a handful. Immediately after that experience, it is unrealistic to expect cities, towns, legislators, and state housing officials to embark on another round of mandated local rezoning.

Persuasion and incentives are less stressful approaches, but they have historically produced limited results in opening local zoning barriers. Fortunately, there is another path—one that is both more effective and less exhausting: changing the rules of zoning at the state level.

Massachusetts has already used this approach successfully. In recent years, the state reduced the voting threshold for certain pro-housing zoning changes from a supermajority to a simple majority. It legalized ADUs statewide. It also now allows multi-family housing at four dwelling units per acre on certain state-owned properties, regardless of local zoning.

There are now many proposals to further reform state zoning rules, including:

• allowing duplexes on all residential lots and up to four units on lots served by public sewer and water;
• eliminating or reducing parking minimums;
• legalizing use variances for multifamily housing and relaxing standards for dimensional variances for multifamily housing;
• reducing or eliminating minimum lot size requirements for residential development;
• allowing multifamily housing on land owned by religious institutions (the “Yes In God’s Backyard” proposal);
• allowing dense housing development on MBTA-owned land;
• and allowing certain residential uses and dimensions by special permit, such that local special permit granting authorities (SPGA) can approve of projects that otherwise would be prohibited by the local zoning ordinance or bylaw.

One additional reform should be added to this list: allowing as-of-right adaptive reuse, with preservation of the principal structure, of up to six or eight homes per property on residential lots within a half-mile of walkable, transit-served, mixed-use hubs. The state could establish criteria for identifying eligible village centers, squares, downtowns, and Main Streets.

Massachusetts is home to hundreds of such places, surrounded by neighborhoods long built out with houses. That many of these buildings are not formally designated as historic does not mean they lack merit for preservation. Reusing them carries environmental, aesthetic, and cultural benefits.

Pushback on this proposal could come from many directions. Housing advocates might argue it does not go far enough, only legalizing small-scale infill when transit-oriented development calls for great density. Pragmatists may suggest not all existing homes are worthy of preservation incentives. Concerns about traffic and parking are understandably directed at most rezoning proposals. Some people will object to the potential loss of trees and open yard space to buildings in their neighborhoods. And some will argue that such planning decisions should be made locally.

The response to the pushback is, first, that this proposal must ultimately be paired with other policies and initiatives to expand transit, improve walkability, manage parking, and allow even greater residential densities in targeted locations. Second, policymaking requires a balancing of diverse and sometimes conflicting priorities—and stable housing is a fundamental human need. Third, preservation offers enough benefits that it is worth the risk of marginal overuse. And fourth, this reform would support highly contextual infill in places that represent a state-level priority for growth; there is little advantage to leaving such a reform to gradual, piecemeal local decision-making.

Alignment of Preservation with Abundance – At Scale

As noted, tight zoning has been treated for decades as a preservation strategy. In some contexts, it works: When large buildings sit on small lots, restrictive zoning can leave too little room to make teardown-and-expansion worthwhile. But where there are smaller homes on larger lots, the opposite often occurs. Tight zoning incentivizes mansionization—the maximization of floor area for each household.

A better approach is to align preservation with abundance. Zoning can reward the retention of existing buildings by allowing additional homes, pairing conservation with housing diversity rather than conservation with shortage and exclusivity. Newton’s MRT zoning demonstrates that this balance is achievable.

Each city and town could try to design its own version of this reform, over many years and many political battles. Or the state can adopt a proven, modest reform for all communities at once. Newton has shown that it works. The next step is scale.