Dive Brief:
- Cambridge, Massachusetts, last week launched an interactive dashboard to keep track of housing development across the city.
- The public-facing tool uses data from across city departments to provide information about housing projects that create or remove residential units, including pre-permitted projects, projects under construction and new housing completed since Jan. 1, 2025.
- The city last year passed zoning changes that allow multifamily housing in residential districts citywide.
Dive Insight:
In 2018, Cambridge set a housing goal of 12,500 units by 2030. As of 2025, it had generated a little over 3,100.
When the Cambridge City Council passed its multifamily housing zoning ordinance in February 2025, all of its residential areas came under the same zoning codes for the first time in the city’s history. Since then, the city has received “significant public interest” in how the reforms are playing out, it said in a news release.
“Passing a policy is only the beginning,” Cambridge Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui said in a news release last week. “We have a responsibility to closely monitor how change unfolds, and to communicate openly with residents who are living with those changes in their neighborhoods every day.”
The city’s tracker has nearly 250 housing projects in various stages of development in its database.
“Residents have told us they want clear, reliable information about how housing is changing in Cambridge,” City Manager Yi-An Huang said in a press release. “By including projects at every stage of development, including early-stage proposals that are often difficult to track, we are giving residents a more complete picture of housing activity across our community.”
The city also announced a temporary multifamily housing community liaison to help inform residents.
The city is facing two lawsuits related to its inclusionary zoning regulations, which require at least 20% of the square footage of new large residential housing development to be affordable, the Cambridge Somerville Independent reported.
