Supporting a new generation of walkable neighborhoods with housing abundance, active public realms, & thriving small business ecosystems. Founder remainplaces.com
Jonathan Berk 🏠
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massachusetts local land use boards are out of control
MIT invented the fusion reactor now being built in Virginia. This is a common story. Massachusetts: where great companies are born and never raised.
Silicon Valley runs on a pro-worker California law from 1872: the noncompete ban.
It's time to bring it here.
Jonathan Berk 🏠
It's so weird, because if you look at the surrounding land use, it's grocery stores and banks...adding a TJs wont overwhelm the area.
Vice Mayor Burhan Azeem
Jonathan Berk 🏠
Since 2023, roughly 7,000 of the approximately 30,000 housing units permitted in Massachusetts have been located in MBTA Communities zoning districts.
Mr. Minogue has campaigned to repeal the very law helping produce those homes.
A new @pewresearch.org study finds that infill housing near jobs, stores, and transit costs governments ~$21,000 less per home to serve, cuts long term infrastructure maintenance costs in half, and generates 13% more in annual property tax revenue per acre than sprawl.
For years, duplexes, townhomes, and other “missing middle” homes were almost absent from Spokane’s housing pipeline.
After zoning reforms expanded options, missing middle housing rose from just 3–4% of permits to 20% of all residential permitting in 2025.
www.spokanejournal.com/articles/182...
"Eliminating minimum parking requirements" does not mean "eliminating parking."
After Minneapolis removed parking minimums, citywide parking ratios dropped from 1.0 to 0.73 spaces per unit. Walkable areas often built little parking, while others built closer to prior levels.
Kenji 🌈
Jonathan Berk 🏠
Jonathan Berk 🏠
Jonathan Berk 🏠
Jonathan Berk 🏠
Jonathan Berk 🏠
massachusetts local land use boards are out of control
Jonathan Berk 🏠
"The reluctance of some communities to expand their housing supply comes at a painful cost...
If lawmakers on Beacon Hill don’t want this decision to be made by referendum, they’ll do their job and take up the issue themselves.
The time for incrementalism is over."
Missing middle housing — once a mere sliver of residential permits issued by the city of Spokane between 2020 and 2022 — surged to nearly 20% of all residential permitting in 2025.
