CommunityScale drafts, reviews, and modernizes zoning across the United States. Much of our zoning work pairs with a housing needs assessment so the new code is calibrated to the supply gap it has to close, with particular focus on enabling mixed-use, walkable environments and missing middle housing. We deliver both tactical district-by-district reform and full reformations of a town or city’s zoning ordinance.

Massachusetts zoning

In Massachusetts our work is grounded in MGL Chapter 40A and the 2024 Affordable Homes Act, including MBTA Communities (Section 3A) overlays, ADUs, Dover Amendment uses, solar and battery storage, special permits, variances, and nonconformities. Every bylaw we draft is built to survive AG review and to actually produce the housing the community said it wanted.

Comprehensive rezoning and recodification

Beyond Massachusetts, we lead and support comprehensive rezoning and recodification projects: restructuring use tables, reorganizing dimensional standards, rewriting administrative procedures, and folding in design and form standards. We also produce zoning audits as standalone diagnostics or as the front end of a larger rewrite.

Projects featuring zoning:

• Lynn, MA: comprehensive zoning rewrite (adopted unanimously)
• Lowell, MA: comprehensive rezoning
• Everett, MA: zoning audit and recodification
• Melrose, MA: zoning recodification
• Malden, MA: MBTA Communities zoning
• Dedham, MA: MBTA Communities zoning
• Sherborn, MA: multifamily zoning overlay
• West Natick, MA: mixed-use zoning with development feasibility
• North Attleboro, MA: mixed-use zoning
• Lewiston, ME: Design Lewiston guidelines
• Everett, MA: design regulations
• Riverside TOD design guidelines
• Dayton, OH: mixed-use district zoning for onMain
• Needham, MA: Northland development master plan

Related reading:

• Nesting zoning use definitions into functional groups
• Five lessons learned drafting an MBTA Communities overlay for Lowell
• Rolling out new state-required multifamily zoning
• The Affordable Homes Act and planning in Massachusetts communities
• Diving into Portland, OR’s multifamily zoning incentives
• Climate tech and zoning: you want to do what!? where!?
• How zoning for data centers could actually benefit your community
• Thoughts on how Everett became a housing boomtown in the Boston area
• What is 40B Safe Harbor?