Despite the importance of local zoning to the state’s housing future, it’s hard to have a complete picture across all regions and 351 municipalities. Zoning codes in Massachusetts are dizzyingly complex. Each city and town adopt its own zoning according to its own rules and system. This makes interpreting them across municipalities very challenging. Whether one is a developer, advocate, or regional planner, understanding what is permitted where and under what circumstances is an arduous task. Additionally, as municipalities update their codes, they often layer modifications over existing laws, creating a patchwork of rules and parameters that make interpretation even harder. Rarely do municipalities undertake a complete "recodification" of their zoning that would reconcile all the many overlapping modifications, redundancies, and conflicts.
Another challenge to interpreting and standardizing municipal zoning codes is that there are many terms within the general land use lexicon that have no standard definition, and that municipalities may interpret differently. The terms multifamily, accessory dwelling unit, and percent lot coverage, for example, may refer to slightly different things in different municipalities. Most of the time municipalities will include a definitions section that explains specific terms, or will describe specifications in detail within the document, but there are cases in which these or similar terms are used without further explanation. This tangle is compounded by the wide variety of repositories and formats for zoning codes, ranging from PDF files or Microsoft Word documents posted on the municipal website to HTML pages hosted by third-party providers such as Municode. Some municipalities even post the zoning text as a scanned document, hampering users' ability to search, copy, or quote the code itself. The lack of standard formats and definitions for zoning codes renders local bylaws and ordinances largely inaccessible and opaque to those without abundant time to find and parse the zoning text.
Current practices with regard to municipal zoning often fail to fulfill principles of government transparency and equitable engagement. They also provide unfair advantages to developers, attorneys, or realtors with inside knowledge and relationships, while disadvantaging those who have not previously worked in a given community. This is especially true for developers seeking to build much-needed workforce and affordable housing in suburban towns, where byzantine regulatory pathways stand between a proposal and a building permit.
Part of the challenge of accessing zoning data stems from the limited capacity of municipalities to maintain and publish electronic GIS records. Zoning changes, including the creation of new districts and the modification of existing district boundaries, are commonly authorized by changes to the text of the bylaw or ordinance itself. These changes must then be translated into new district boundaries on the zoning map itself, a task that may become an afterthought. In many cases, the available spatial data lags one or more revisions behind the code, if it is published at all. Additional barriers exist for those municipalities that don't even have direct access to their own zoning data, having outsourced the maintenance of the electronic records to consultants who may charge a fee for each change or record request. While this format of law making has been central to the historical makeup of the Commonwealth, it is challenging to assess the current state of zoning without standard formats, data systems, or definitions for municipal zoning. For developers, it is similarly challenging to navigate the various rules and protocols town by town when attempting to meet all requirements to build.