The presentation, dated March 11, 2019, includes slides used to present the information necessary to understand the rationale for zoning changes, the location of the zoning areas under consideration and the charts, tables and maps that help describe the situation. The proposed zoning changes, especially articles 6, 7, 8, 11 and 16, only cover changes affecting about 7% of the Town, those parts of the Town that are currently zoned R4-R7 and the B zoning districts.
Related articles
This is the second in a series of “Arlington 2020” articles. The first article looked at the number of one-, two-, and three-family homes and condominiums in Arlington, and how that housing stock has changed over time. This article will examine changes in the value of those properties. We’re going to look at “value” through the lens of property assessments, so we should start with an explanation of what property assessments are and how they’re used.
A property assessment is simply the Town Assessor’s best estimate of what a property is worth, based on market values. The assessor’s office inspects properties every ten years; during intervening years, assessments are adjusted based on sale prices of similar homes in a given tax neighborhood. For all practical purposes, assessed values tend to trail market values by two years. In my neighborhood, property assessments are spot on — my house was assessed at $501,000 in 2020; during 2018, sales of similar homes in the neighborhood ranged from $495,000 to $520,000.
Condominiums have a single assessed value, which includes land and buildings. Otherwise, assessed values are broken down into land value, building value, and yard items (e.g., a garage or a shed).
Assessed values are used to determine the tax rate. The assessors page on the town website has calculations in worksheet form, but for all practical purposes, it’s just a division problem. One takes the total tax levy and divides by the sum of all property assessments (in thousands of dollars), and that’s the tax rate. An individual’s taxes are the assessed value of their property (in thousands of dollars) multiplied by the tax rate. If an individual owns (say) 1% of the assessed value in town, that individual will pay 1% of the property tax levy.
The main point is that assessed values are based on market values, but with a two-year lag. Consequently, we can use them as a way to see how home prices have changed over time.
With that background information out of the way, we can look at some numbers. Here’s a graph of the median assessed values for condominiums, one-family, two-family, and three-family homes from 2013 through 2020. (the “median” is a value such that half of the assessments are above, and half are below).

year | Condominium | Single Family | Two-family | Three-family |
2013 | $297,800 | $472,850 | $532,650 | $581,600 |
2014 | $300,150 | $484,400 | $530,000 | $574,800 |
2015 | $318,200 | $507,900 | $572,000 | $616,300 |
2016 | $351,050 | $546,300 | $623,150 | $673,550 |
2017 | $357,750 | $581,200 | $663,900 | $714,800 |
2018 | $395,400 | $618,800 | $732,100 | $787,600 |
2019 | $463,250 | $701,550 | $851,200 | $897,500 |
2020 | $473,100 | $771,900 | $944,000 | $1,010,850 |
%change | 58.87% | 63.24% | 77.23% | 73.81% |
As one would expect, two-family homes are worth more than single-family, and three-family are worth more than two. Condominiums have a lot of variety; they could be half of a duplex, or a single unit in an apartment building. But a general upward trend is clearly evident.
These values are straight out of the assessor’s database, and not adjusted for inflation. The Bureau of Labor Statistic’s inflation calculator shows 12% inflation between 2013 and 2020; the %change is pretty considerable, even if one deducts 12% for inflation.
Next, I’d like to dig further into the 1–3 family assessments, by breaking them down into the value of land vs the value of buildings, and showing how that’s changed over time.
Single-family homes:

year | Land value | Building value | Total assessed value |
2013 | $243,700 | $226,300 | $472,850 |
2014 | $253,750 | $227,050 | $484,450 |
2015 | $272,700 | $229,900 | $507,900 |
2016 | $296,400 | $243,950 | $546,400 |
2017 | $326,400 | $246,400 | $581,250 |
2018 | $360,900 | $248,100 | $618,800 |
2019 | $440,400 | $250,400 | $701,600 |
2020 | $448,600 | $316,300 | $771,900 |
%change | 84.08% | 39.77% | 63.24% |
Two-family homes:

year | Land value | Building value | Total assessed value |
2013 | $202,500 | $320,550 | $532,650 |
2014 | $212,250 | $307,800 | $530,000 |
2015 | $256,400 | $309,800 | $572,000 |
2016 | $262,500 | $349,400 | $623,150 |
2017 | $307,000 | $350,700 | $663,900 |
2018 | $352,500 | $373,900 | $732,100 |
2019 | $478,300 | $374,850 | $851,700 |
2020 | $454,500 | $486,100 | $944,000 |
%change | 124.44% | 51.65% | 77.23% |
Three-family homes:

year | Land value | Building value | Total assessed value |
2013 | $200,100 | $377,900 | $581,600 |
2014 | $209,100 | $364,100 | $574,800 |
2015 | $249,800 | $366,550 | $616,300 |
2016 | $259,950 | $412,350 | $673,550 |
2017 | $298,100 | $412,500 | $714,800 |
2018 | $343,050 | $438,800 | $787,600 |
2019 | $459,000 | $440,100 | $897,500 |
2020 | $440,100 | $578,450 | $1,010,850 |
%change | 119.94% | 53.07% | 73.81% |
There are several things worth pointing out in these breakdowns.
First, note that the land and building values “jump” a bit between 2019–2020. 2020 was one of our full reassessment years, so I’m willing to attribute this to a periodic course correction. The total increase is generally linear, but the land/building composition has changed.
Second, the median land value for single-family homes is higher than the median building value, for all years between 2013–2020.
Third, most of the increases come from changes in land value. I believe this comes down to location, location, and location. Arlington has a well-respected public school system, and it’s close to universities and tech centers is Cambridge and Boston, and office parks in Lexington, Waltham, and Burlington. City amenities are close at hand.
So what does one do about our rising home prices, and in particular, the rising value of land? The first (and perhaps default) answer is to do nothing. Rising property values are a boon to homeowners who purchased a capital asset (i.e., a house) in the past, and have seen its value appreciate over time. The downside of doing nothing is that each year, increasing housing prices create an ever-increasing income threshold for new residents.
An alternative approach would be to allow more (and smaller) units to be built on each lot. This requires reconstruction or redevelopment, but it allows the cost of land to be amortized among several households. More units/lot means more people and more density, but it reduces the income threshold for buying in to Arlington. (Note that the per-unit cost for three-family homes is lower than the per-unit cost for two-family homes. Similarly, the per-unit cost for two-family homes is lower than the cost of a single-family home).
A third article will look at the distribution of housing prices in Arlington, and how the distribution varies by housing type.
Here is a spreadsheet of data shown in this post.
Thanks to so many of you who came out Monday evening for the demonstration in support of the MBTA Communities proposal before the Arlington Redevelopment Board meeting! Over 20 people were there – a substantial and notable showing, especially on such short notice. Paulette Schwarz took some photos of the demonstration early in the evening which she kindly shared with us.




A municipality’s master plan is intended to set the vision and start the process of crafting the future of the municipality in regard to several elements, housing, history, culture, open space, transportation, finance, etc. Arlington began a very public discussion about these issues and the development of the Master Plan in 2012. In 2015, after thorough community wide discussion, the Master Plan was adopted by Town Meeting. This year, 2019, the focus is on passing Articles that will amend the current zoning bylaws in order to implement the housing vision that was approved in 2015.
Article 16 is a proposal to encourage the production of affordable housing in the town of Arlington. I brought this article to town meeting for several reasons, namely, our increasing cost of housing and our increasing cost of land. Arlington is part of the Metropolitan Boston area; we share borders with Cambridge, Somerville, and Medford, and are a mere 5.5 miles from Boston itself. Years ago, people moved out of cities and into the suburbs. That trend has reversed during the last decade, and people are moving back to urban areas, including Metro-Boston. Metro-Boston is a good source of jobs; people come here to work and want to live nearby. That obviously puts pressure on housing prices, and Arlington is not immune from that pressure.
Another reason for proposing Article 16 was my desire to start a conversation about the role our zoning laws play in the cost of housing, and how they might be used to relieve some of that burden. During the 20th century people discovered that one cannot draw a line on a map and say “upper-class households on this side, lower-class households on that side”, but one can draw a line on a map and say “single-family homes on this side, and apartments on that side”. For all practical purposes, the latter achieves the same result as the former. When zoning places a threshold on the cost of housing, it determines who can and cannot afford to live in a given area.
Today 70% of Arlington’s land is exclusively zoned for single family homes, the predominant form of housing in town. In 2013, the median cost of a single-family home was $472,850; this rose to $618,800 in 2018 — an increase of 31%. We can break this down further. The median building cost for a single-family building rose from $226,300 in 2013 to $248,100 in 2018 (an increase of 9.6%), and the median cost for a single-family lot rose from $243,700 to $360,900 (an increase of 48%). Land is a large component of our housing costs, and it continues to rise. Certain neighborhoods (e.g., Kelwyn Manor) saw substantial increases in land assessments in 2019, enough that the Assessor’s office issued a statement to explain the property tax increases. To that end, multifamily housing is a straightforward way to reduce the land costs associated with housing. Putting two units on a lot instead of one decreases the land cost by 50% for each unit.
Article 16 tries to encourage the production of affordable housing (restricted to 60% of the area median income for rentable units and 70% for owner-occupied units). It works as follows:
- Projects of six or more units must make 15% of those units affordable. This is part of our existing bylaws.
- Projects of twenty or more units must make 20% of those units affordable. This is a new provision in Article 16.
- Projects of six or more units that produce more than the required number of affordable units will be eligible for density bonuses, according to the proposed section 8.2.4(C). Essentially, this allows a developer to build a larger building, in exchange for creating more affordable housing.
- Projects of six or more units that produce only the required number of affordable units are not eligible for the density bonuses contained in 8.2.4(C).
- Projects of 4-5 units will be eligible for the density bonuses in section 8.2.4(C), as long as they are of a use, and in a zone contained in those tables. This provision is intended to permit smaller apartments and townhouses, filling a need for residents who don’t necessarily want (or may not be able to afford) a single-family home. This provision can help reduce land costs by allowing a four-unit townhouse in place of a duplex, for example.
Historically, Arlington has had mixed results with affordable housing production, mainly due to the limited opportunity to build projects of six units or more. It is my hope that the density bonuses allow more of these projects to be built.
In conclusion, the problem of housing affordability in Arlington comes from a variety of pressures, is several years in the making, and will likely take years to address. I see Article 16 as the first step down a long road, and I ask for your support during the 2019 Town Meeting. I’d also ask for your support on articles 6, 7, and 8 which contain minor changes to make Article 16 work properly.
by Steve Revilak
The term “AMI” or “Area Median Income” comes up in almost any discussion about affordable housing, because it’s used to set rents and the household incomes for people who are eligible to live in affordable dwellings. AMI is a fairly technocratic concept and my goal is to make the concept (and the numbers) easier to understand.
AMIs are set each year by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; broadly speaking, an AMI is the median income of a region. Arlington is part of the “Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH HUD Metro FMR Area” which consists of more than 100 cities and towns in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Median incomes represent the “middle” family income of an area—half of households make more, and half make less.
In the process of turning median incomes into income limits, HUD also considers household size: larger households are assigned larger AMI limits than smaller ones, in order to reflect the higher cost of living for more family members.
How do these limits translate into affordable housing regulations? Arlington’s affordable housing requirements (aka “inclusionary zoning”) require that rents for affordable units be priced for the 60% area median income, but the dwellings are available to households making up to 70%. Let’s show an example with some numbers.
Household size | 60% Income Limit | 70% Income Limit | 60% Rent |
---|---|---|---|
1 | $68,520 | $79,940 | $1,717/month |
2 | $78,360 | $91,420 | $1,959/month |
3 | $88,140 | $102,830 | $2,203/month |
HUD considers an apartment suitable for a household if it has one bedroom less than the number of household members, so a two-bedroom apartment would be suitable for a household of three, a one-bedroom would be suitable for a household of two, and a studio would be suitable for a household of one. The monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment would be calculated as follows: $88,140 ÷ 12 × 30% = $2,203. The 30% comes from HUD’s rule that affordable housing tenants should not be cost-burdened, meaning that they pay no more than 30% of their income in rent.$88k or $102k/year can seem like a lot of money (and once upon a time it was). To get a better sense of what these income levels mean, I looked into what kinds of jobs pay these wages. To that end, I found wage information from the Arlington Public Schools report to Town Meeting, the Arlington town budget, and wage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Here are a few scenarios:
Scenario 1: single adult
Scenario 1 represents a single adult living alone, and earning between $68,520 and $79,940. Jobs in this pay range include:
- Elementary classroom teacher ($62,000 – $75,000)
- Town planner ($75,000 – 79,000)
- Animal Control Officer ($72,000)
- Firefighter ($73,640)
- Librarian ($70,395)
- Lab Technician ($70,710)
- Social Worker ($71,470)
- Subway operator ($72,270)
- Licensed Practical Nurse ($75,690)
- Paralegal ($77,500)
- Chef ($78,040)
- Carpenter ($78,000)
Scenario 2: single parent with household of two
Scenario 2 represents a single parent earning between $78,360 and $91,420/year. Jobs in this pay range include:
- Office Manager – Assessor’s office ($80,399)
- Assistant Town Clerk ($77,375)
- Town Engineer ($74,000 – $80,000)
- Police Department Patrol Officer ($87,000)
- Town Budget Director ($88,488)
- Telecommunications equipment installer ($80,350)
- Plasterer and Stucco Mason ($82,250)
- Electrician ($82,380)
- Cement Mason ($86,250)
- Plumber and pipe fitter ($90,580)
Scenario 3: household of two, both adults
Scenario 3 has two adults, each earning $39,180 – $45,710 per year. Jobs in this salary range include several that we’ve come to know as “essential workers” during the pandemic.
- Special education teaching assistant ($34,290)
- Arlington Public Schools Paraprofessional ($36,290 – 42,440)
- Substitute Teacher ($34,921)
- Inspectional Services Record Keeper ($44,481)
- Food preparation worker ($39,590)
- Bartender ($39,730)
- Childcare worker ($40,470)
- Ambulance Driver ($40,890)
- Waiter ($41,440)
- Pharmacy aide ($41,460)
- Bank teller ($42,270)
- Tailor and dressmaker ($43,790)
- Restaurant cook ($44,140)
You may have noticed gaps in these lists — for example, there are no jobs listed in the $50,000 – $60,000 range because it’s in between the income limits for one- and two-income households. It’s also worth noting that a fair number of town employees’ salaries would qualify them for affordable housing (the town is Arlington’s largest employer).
So who qualifies to live in affordable housing? People with a lot of ordinary, working-class jobs, including many town employees.
Dave Weinstock, an Arlington resident interested in affordable housing wondered about the concept of “developer math”. The math involved in planning an affordable housing projects is a problem that needs to get solved in order to have anything built here in Arlington, or anywhere. This topic comes up frequently in community discussions about the need for more housing.
Questions are raised around:
- 1- Why build so many units vs. smaller buildings
- 2- Why parking is costly and inefficient use of land
- 3- Why can’t more affordable or all affordable units be built?
- 4- The cost of subsidizing affordable units and how that may translate to higher rental rates/costs, etc.
Dave found a great Architecture and Development firm in Atlanta (Kronberg Urbanists + Architects, based in Atlanta GA) that lays out a nice presentation, includes sample proformas, and real life scenarios that may help us understand this piece of the puzzle better when evaluating any project and how developers may be incented to build certain types of projects or do certain types of work.
Here is a link, reformatted to be within this website, to the presentation, showing the varieties of choices, costs, formulas and outcomes developers consider before deciding if the project can be built: https://equitable-arlington.org/developer-math_kua_071420/
Much of our hope for more affordable housing depends on the market forces of capitalism and the willingness of developers to build for good, not just for profit. But the developers must be able to cover their costs. Many communities are highly skeptical of developers, assuming the community will get tricked, the developer will get greedy and the promised housing will be a disappointment. Trust is needed. But so is verification. We all need to learn the developer math.
What are the math factors that a developer considers before deciding to build affordable housing?

Here is a link to the original presentation. https://www.kronbergua.com/post/mr-mu-let-s-talk-about-math
Accessory Dwelling Units (aka “granny flats”)
The following information was presented to the Arlington Redevelopment Board in October, 2020 by Barbara Thornton, TMM, Precinct 16
This Article proposes to allow Accessory Dwelling Units, “as of right”, in each of the 8 residential zoning districts in Arlington.
Why is this zoning legislation important?
Arlington is increasingly losing the diversity it once had. It has become increasingly difficult for residents who have grown up and grown old in the town to remain here. This will only become more difficult as the effects of tax increases to support the new schools, including the high school, roll into the tax bills for lower income residents and senior citizens on a fixed income. For young adults raised in Arlington, the price of a home to buy or to rent is increasingly out of reach.
Who benefits from ADUs?
- Families benefit from greater flexibility as their needs change over time and, in particular providing options for older adults to be able to stay in their homes and for households with disabled persons or young adults who want additional privacy but still be within a family setting.
- Residents seeking an increase in the diversity of housing choices in the Town while respecting the residential character and scale of existing neighborhoods; ADUs provide a non-subsidized form of housing that is generally less costly and more affordable than similar units in multifamily buildings;
- Residents wanting more housing units in Arlington’s total housing stock with minimal adverse effects on Arlington’s neighborhoods.
What authority and established policy is this built on?
Arlington’s Master Plan is the foundational document establishing the validity and mission for pursuing the zoning change that will allow Accessory Dwelling Units.
Under Introduction in Part 5, Housing and Residential Development, the Master Plan states: Arlington’s Master Plan provides a framework for addressing key issues such as affordability, transit-oriented residential development, and aging in place.
The Master Plan states that the American Community Survey (ACS) reports that Arlington’s housing units are slightly larger than those in other inner-suburbs and small cities. In Arlington, the median number of rooms per unit is 5.7. There is a great deal of difference in density and housing size among the different Arlington neighborhoods. The generally larger size of homes makes it easier to contemplate a successful move to encourage ADUs.
What do other municipalities do?
According to a study (https://equitable-arlington.org/2020/02/16/accessory-dwelling-units-policies/), by 2017 65 out of 101 municipalities in the greater Boston (MAPC) region allowed Accessory Dwelling Units by right or by special permit. The average number of ADU’s added per year was only about 3. But by 2017, Lexington had 75 ADUs and Newton had 73. Both of these communities were among about 10 “as of right” municipalities in the MAPC region. This finding suggests that communities with more restrictions are less likely to see any significant affordable housing benefits.
Even in the midst of a housing crisis in this region, according to Amy Dain, housing expert, (https://equitable-arlington.org/2020/02/18/zoning-for-accessory-dwelling-units/) most municipalities still have zoning laws that restrict single family home owners from creating more affordable housing.
And this is despite the fact that, as according to Banker & Tradesman, March 10, 2020: https://www.bankerandtradesman.com/63-percent-in-greater-boston-back-adus/, 63% of people in the region approve of ADUs. California has recently passed strong pro-ADU legislation. A study by Zillow further corroborated this strong interest in communities across the US, including our region. https://equitable-arlington.org/2020/03/10/adu-popularity/.
Learn more about Accessory Dwelling Units/ “Granny Flats” here: https://planning.org/knowledgebase/accessorydwellings/

I’ve had an annual ritual for the past several years: obtain a spreadsheet of property assessments from the Town Assessor, load them in to a database, and run a series of R computations against the data. I started doing this for a number of reasons: to understand what was built where (our zoning laws have changed over time, and there are numerous non-conforming uses), the relationship between land and building values, the capital costs of different types of housing, and how these factors have changed over time.
I’d typically compile these analyses into a fact-book of sorts, and email it around to people that I thought might be interested. This year, I’m going to post the analyses here as a series of articles. This first installment contains basic information about Arlington’s low-density housing: single-, two-, and three-family homes, as well as condominiums. Condominiums are something of an oddball in this category — a condominium can be half of a two-family structure, part of a larger residential building, or somewhere in between. There’s a lot of variety.
Here’s a table showing how the number of units has changed over time, since 2013.
land use | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Single Family | 7984 | 7983 | 7991 | 8000 | 7994 | 7994 | 7998 | 7999 |
Condominium | 3242 | 3304 | 3367 | 3492 | 3552 | 3662 | 3726 | 3827 |
Two-family | 2352 | 2332 | 2308 | 2282 | 2263 | 2218 | 2183 | 2139 |
Three-family | 207 | 201 | 196 | 194 | 193 | 190 | 185 | 182 |
Arlington’s predominant form of housing — the single family home — has stayed relatively static; we’ve added 15 over the last seven years. The number of condominiums has increased significantly: +585 over seven years. That, coupled with the reduction of two-family homes (-213) and three-family homes (-25) leads me to believe that a fair number of rental units have been removed from the market.
Next, I’d like to look at how these homes are spread across our various zoning districts. (The “Notes” section at the bottom of the post explains what the zoning district codes mean).
Zone | Single-Family | Condo | Two-family | Three-family |
---|---|---|---|---|
B1 | 8 | 22 | 13 | 11 |
B2 | 1 | 4 | 1 | |
B2A | 1 | 18 | ||
B3 | 59 | 4 | ||
B4 | 1 | 59 | 5 | 5 |
B5 | 1 | 1 | ||
I | 8 | 18 | 7 | 1 |
R0 | 502 | |||
R1 | 6798 | 168 | 200 | 7 |
R2 | 647 | 1816 | 1881 | 124 |
R3 | 4 | 39 | 11 | 17 |
R4 | 23 | 79 | 2 | 3 |
R5 | 3 | 616 | 5 | 4 |
R6 | 2 | 686 | 8 | 7 |
R7 | 1 | 243 | 2 | 1 |
A few points to note:
- R0 is our newest district, which was established in 1991. It consists only of conforming single-family homes.
- R1 is Arlington’s original (per 1975 zoning) single-family district. It’s predominantly single-family homes, but there are a fair number of two-family homes, and even a few three-families. The presence of condominiums suggests additional multi-family homes (that consist of two or more condominiums)
- R2 is predominantly two-, and three-family homes. Although three-family homes are no longer allowed in this district, R2 has the largest number of three-families in town.
- Residential uses are no longer allowed in the industrial (I) districts, but the I districts contain 34 homes. These buildings pre-date the current zoning laws (aka “pre-existing non-conforming”). A good portion of the Dudley street industrial district is a residential neighborhood.
I’m pointing out these conformities (and non-conformities) for a reason. The zoning map (and use tables) dictate what is allowed today, along with specifying a vision for the future. Our zoning bylaw happens to contain a strong statement to this effect: “It is the purpose of this Bylaw to discourage the perpetuity of nonconforming uses and structures whenever possible” (section 8.1.1(A)). Despite the strong statement of intent, it can take decades (if not generations) for a built environment to catch up with the bylaw’s prescriptions.
I’ll finish this post with a breakdown of how condominiums are distributed across the various zoning districts:
Zone | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | delta |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
(N/A) | 14 | 15 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -14 |
B1 | 16 | 16 | 18 | 18 | 18 | 22 | 22 | 22 | 6 |
B2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 2 |
B2A | 19 | 18 | 18 | 18 | 18 | 18 | 18 | 18 | -1 |
B3 | 55 | 55 | 61 | 59 | 59 | 59 | 59 | 59 | 4 |
B4 | 47 | 47 | 59 | 59 | 59 | 59 | 59 | 59 | 12 |
I | 18 | 18 | 18 | 18 | 18 | 18 | 18 | 18 | 0 |
R1 | 140 | 144 | 146 | 148 | 150 | 154 | 162 | 168 | 28 |
R2 | 1355 | 1406 | 1456 | 1518 | 1574 | 1670 | 1723 | 1816 | 461 |
R3 | 22 | 25 | 28 | 31 | 31 | 37 | 37 | 39 | 17 |
R4 | 65 | 67 | 67 | 79 | 79 | 79 | 79 | 79 | 14 |
R5 | 616 | 616 | 616 | 616 | 616 | 616 | 616 | 616 | 0 |
R6 | 630 | 632 | 635 | 683 | 683 | 683 | 686 | 686 | 56 |
R7 | 243 | 243 | 243 | 243 | 243 | 243 | 243 | 243 | 0 |
The last column (“delta”) shows the difference between 2013 and 2020. The largest increase occurred in the R2 (two-family) district, followed by R6 (medium-density apartments, where most of the increase took place in 2014) and R1 (single-family).
That it will do it for the first installation. In the next post, we’ll look at how the cost (assessed values, actually) of Arlington’s low density housing has changed over the last seven years.
Here is a spreadsheet, containing the various tables shown in this article.
Notes
Arlington’s zoning map divides the town into a set of districts, and each district has regulations about what kinds of buildings and uses are allowed (or not allowed). The districts mentioned in this article are:
- B1 (Neighborhood Office district)
- B2 (Neighborhood Business distrct)
- B2A (Major Business District)
- B3 (Village Business District)
- B4 (Vehicular-Oriented Business District)
- I (Industrial District)
- R0 (Single-Family, large-lot district)
- R1 (Single-Family Distict)
- R2 (Two-Family District)
- R3 (Three-Family District)
- R4 (Townhouse District)
- R5 (Low-Density Apartment District)
- R6 (Medium-Density Apartment District)
- R7 (High-Density Apartment District)
Arlington’s Zoning Bylaw describes each district in detail (see sections 5.4.2, 5.5.2, and 5.6.2)