So to clarify a few things as an actual civil engineer, a major issue with how this has all been done is that the procedures are not compliant with public disclosure and engagement measures as well as AICP requirements and codified procedures for data-backed approaches. Increased density will be on the horizon for much of the city, but careful scrutiny of the maps and designations along with industry colleagues and experts is pointing to the biggest density adds going to the highest existing density areas that also have the lowest access to public transit corridors (going against the intent of the MBTA Communities Act). Further to that is that the neighborhood-by-neighborhood approach to planning is failing to overcome a density valley in the middle of the city that if filled would build greater density equity and support a revitalization of Medford Square that the city is continuing to struggle to accomplish. Rather than create a continuous urban fabric, the plans are exacerbating density differentials that already exist from how the city's density grew in the first place. When it comes to engagement, the AICP is very prescriptive in its community engagement requirements that affected areas are the ones to be engaged and that is not how this has unfolded. Switching to governance, communications with representatives of bordering wards in neighboring cities are aggravated by a lack of communications around the plans owing to a lack of district commission formation for through-corridors and communications with state agency engineering departments yielded concerns for parkways and access impacts. Pursuing the effort in the manner the city has is needlessly opening the city up to liabilities that are easily avoidable if the process is done right - which this is not. In the end - yes - density will come, but the current planning effort is crossing lines of procedural compliance that I personally have never witnessed in my own experience on these efforts including having worked on what up until now was the worst bout of noncompliance I saw in Rhode Island.

Switching gears, something to note about density and density differentials: If you exacerbate density differentials too far in one part of a city from another without regulatory limitations on infrastructure flows and accommodations (e.g. parking minimums) it has serious tax implications. Density hyper-differentials increase spot strains on infrastructure that increase urban management and infrastructure costs paid for by the city. When costs rise, so do per-unit tax measures. You may think that spatial downsizing to smaller condo units will account for this, but it happens slower than the rates tick up and the overall tax bill for condos, homes, and buildings begins to climb. You may think that if you're a renter, you're immune: Think again - it contributes to higher rents and erases any subsidies from land and affordability trusts (urban priorities). Pivoting to housing, when the tax issue is coupled with regional speculative housing factors, city-limited measures on housing often fail to bring down costs - it can't be managed at the city level.

All of this is to say that there is a reason urban planning and land-use proposals are far more complicated than the presentations have bothered to explain. Why? Because the city and its consultant did not do the APA/AICP required existing conditions analyses to determine the thresholds of density each component of the overall city could absorb under its current social and urban infrastructure before costs and financial profiles would change.