Platform
For
Resilient Urbanism

CENTRE FOR
LANDCAPE RESEARCH

Down-Zoning Boston

The Resilience Districts Boston introduces a new zoning tool for adapting the Greater Boston Area to climate change. Developed by the MIT Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism, "Resilience Districts" serve as a governance structure for mitigating and pooling systemic risks, capturing agglomeration benefits, and providing a potential framework for metropolitan resettlement. Through maps, diagrams, and drawings, a working method is outlined and nine Resilience Districts are identified within the Greater Boston Area. Each Resilience District is analyzed to inform a series of district-wide urban design strategies that reflect regional flood exposure, local land use designations, and neighborhood development opportunities.  A Resilient District includes 1) the protection of critical infrastructure, 2) "up-zoning" of high grounds, 3) the creation gof a "thick and redundant" line of infrastructure, and 4) "down-zoning" low lying areas. These down-zones are areas often built on reclaimed lands or fill, and as such they offer and opportunity for a new flexible forms of dynamic programming, uses, and open spaces provisions that operate along shifting gradients of inundation.
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‍Team
Fadi Masoud, Alan Berger, Jonah Susskind, Mario Giampieri, Xinhui Li, Matthew Spremulli, Michael Wilson.