The Latest from CommunityScale
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Design Lewiston Guidelines
CommunityScale team members led the Design Lewiston Guidelines, a framework to shape a Lewiston, Maine that is attractive, functional, and community-oriented. Serving as a how-to manual for projects in site plan review, the guidelines…
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Zoning
Complete rewrite of existing zoning code with or without map amendments. CommunityScale focuses on compliance with enabling legislation, legibility, and achieving community goals through the rezoning process.
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CommunityScale under contract to manage Everett’s rezoning
CommunityScale led City of Everett’s recodification project to craft a new zoning ordinance and zoning map for the Massachusetts city. The engagement set out to modernize an outdated code in line with the mayor’s…
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Everett Recodification
CommunityScale led the complete rezoning of Everett, Massachusetts with Stantec’s Urban Places and BBHS Law, modernizing an outdated code to deliver the mayor’s vision of a walkable, mixed-use city. The work addressed mobility, new…
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Tracking how truly unaffordable housing has become in the US
For the first time in years, the median household income is not enough to afford a median-priced home, and not even close. For most of the past decade, home prices and household incomes rose…
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Win for affordable housing in court supported by our analysis
CommunityScale’s Nels Nelson and Sarabrent McCoy supported the proponent of an affordable housing development in North Reading, Massachusetts, before the state’s Housing Appeals Committee, which ruled in the developer’s favor. The team’s expert testimony…
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Northern Kentucky Housing Data Analysis
Employment growth is surpassing the availability of workforce housing in the NKADD region. Our data-driven analysis suggests a substantial increase in the production of 1- and 2-bedroom units along with more income-aligned units. While…
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Bayside Master Plan
In a collaboration between urban planning, architecture, and landscape architecture teams, we created a master plan for Portland’s largest mixed-use development in a generation, located within the vibrant and historic Bayside neighborhood a few…
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Affordable Housing Developable Land Analysis
We have extensive experience with 40B General Land Area Minimum (GLAM) determinations, the Massachusetts State regulations for determining developability for affordable housing. Nels has appeared as a witness at the Housing Appeals Committee (HAC)…
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Five lessons learned drafting an MBTA Communities overlay for Lowell
MBTA Communities (also known as Section 3A) is an exciting and bold program that affordable housing proponents and lawmakers from across the country are closely watching to see what kind of impact can be…
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How good urban design can make city residents healthier
What makes us healthy? It’s not just hospitals. The biggest influence on our health is our physical environment and behavior. With most of the world’s population living in cities, urban design has a responsibility…
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Strategy
CommunityScale’s housing strategy work is the bridge from analysis to action. Every Housing Forecast or market study ends with a production target; every strategy engagement turns that target into a concrete list of things…
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Surveys
CommunityScale designs and deploys community housing surveys to capture resident experience, preferences, and priorities at scale. Surveys complement the quantitative analysis (Census, CoStar, HUD, Zillow) with lived experience and forward-looking preferences — the two…
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Engagement
CommunityScale’s projects are informed by local perspectives, such stakeholder engagement to add expertise and ideas to the process and enrich the outcomes. Our community engagement builds common priorities We work with communities to create…
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Commercial Triangle Neighborhood Plan
The Commercial Triangle Neighborhood Plan is a comprehensive project designed to revitalize a rapidly evolving post-industrial urban area into a transit-oriented district through strategic planning and design in Everett, Massachusetts. The plan focuses on…
