Ban teardowns?
The number of modest capes, split levels and even colonials getting bulldozed is on the rise in Greater Boston's more affluent suburbs.
Here's a pretty interesting take from a West Newton architect in the heart of teardown country, which recently appeared as a letter to the editor in the Globe.
The architect, Anatol Zuckerman would like to see teardowns replaced with multifamily housing, though to be fair, he doesn't exactly call for a teardown ban. (In fact, he makes some great observations on why it is so difficult to get towns to face up to this issue.)
Still, it's an issue that is of far greater importance than simply to the buyers with the bucks for the $1 million-plus homes that are replacing all these more modest 1950s and 60s homes.
After all, the Boston area has long suffered from a shortage of decent, reasonably priced middle-class housing and it is a trend that is only getting worse.
Anyway, here's Anatol:
As cities naturally grow, new construction is inevitable, but the Globe missed a bigger and more worrisome problem - urban sprawl ("Teardowns on the rise," Globe West, May 6).
When McMansions proliferate, the less affluent are moving farther and farther out, extending roads and devouring open space. Municipal authorities don't know how to stop this process, because owners of small homes want to sell their properties for profit. These people have a choice: Either buy a larger house in exurbia or a condominium in an urban center.
The growing aging populace wants to buy condos, but they are hard to find. Most of them are of low-quality construction and are small - an average two-bedroom condo is 1,000 square feet.
Why should an elderly couple sell their small house for, say, $400,000 and buy a smaller dwelling for the same amount plus a condo fee? So, our hypothetical couple goes outside the Newton-Wellesley-Needham belt and buys a house in the sticks. Now they have to drive more, walk less, and spend more time in front of a TV set, because small suburban towns have no street life.
The solution is obvious: Teardowns should be replaced with multifamily, mixed-use, midrise structures instead of single-family McMansions. Unfortunately, this kind of urban fabric is not popular with the neighbors. They like it even less than McMansions for the fear of traffic and strangers. So grows urban sprawl.
Anatol Zukerman
Architect
West Newton
