On June 18th, after a 3+ hour meeting consisting primarily of public comment, the Providence City Plan Commission voted to approve the city’s draft Comprehensive Plan and send it to the City Council. Over and over, speakers expressed two things: a love for Providence, and a need for more housing. What differed were people’s ideas as to how to achieve more housing, most critically for low-income people. One camp, consisting of many of the neighborhood associations and the Providence Preservation Society, spoke for human scale development and using the buildings that currently exist so that the character of Providence and its livability would be maintained. The other camp advocated for higher buildings/new construction to meet the city’s housing needs. Recognizing that more housing is paramount, the question is whether we can have both density and maintain Providence’s unique neighborhood characters?
Facing the same dilemma/controversy in New York City, Vishaan Chakrabarti, founder of Practice for Architecture and Urbanism, conducted a study in 2023 to estimate the number of additional housing units which could be added to that city using what are called “gentle density” development techniques. He aimed to keep new construction the same height as surrounding, existing buildings, doing little to no demolition (a win for embodied energy and the landfill), making sure that flood plains were off limits, locating residential construction close to public transit and focusing on using parking lots, underutilized land, one-story buildings and office buildings for new housing. He found that without “substantially changing the look and feel” of the place, over 500,000 units could be added!
Providence’s population was 253,504 in 1940. It is 188,398 today. Eighty years ago, the city had 75,000 more people than we do now. For Providence to add 20,000 housing units in the next ten years, which is the number the city is aiming for in the proposed Comprehensive Plan, we need more information than we have currently. The Providence Planning Department could conduct a study like the one done in New York to determine how many housing units are needed, and of what type? Studio, 1, 2, 3 bed, family? Multi-generational housing? Where? How many vacant and underutilized buildings are there in Providence? How many available floors, attics, usable basements, and garages are available for adding units? What is available in Providence, lot by lot, building by building?
20,000 new housing units using Gentle Density
Decades of advocacy in the West Broadway Neighborhood Association (WBNA) focus area were intended to achieve a balance between preservation and growth. Advocates made a priority of protecting historic buildings and maintaining a walkable residential area, while also adding to the overall population. That neighborhood’s experience provides some helpful experience looking at similar problems in the whole city:
Transformed from decades of vacancy, a second story was added to 1386 Westminster Street, to become Big Nazo’s World Headquarters, but could as easily be living space or, because it’s on a commercial corridor, live/work space. A decrepit 2-bay garage that was home only to pigeons, has been transformed by the WBNA into an affordable, ADA accessible, one-bedroom apartment. A third example, also on Westminster Street, was built on a vacant lot. It represents the modern low-rise apartment infill discussed in the NYC article, complete with a vibrant local business at street level, a ground floor accessible living unit behind and 6 more apartments above, well-designed, modern, fitting seamlessly into a local historic district, and it also received the American Institute of Architects RI award for Sustainable Architecture. There are garages and one story buildings across the city which could be converted to two, three, maybe even four-story buildings without sacrificing their current neighborhood character.
Gentle density could turn lots of underutilized empty attics, basements, and garages into residences. The creation of a program to help elderly residents maintain and live in their homes by enabling caretakers or young families to cohabitate and modifying the fire code to allow triple deckers to be built again are examples of multi-generational housing at its best.
What’s the alternative?
On the other hand, the current proposed Growth Strategy Map recommends changing the neighborhood between Broadway and Westminster Street, sometimes known as “The Column”, to an area of Enhanced Growth, meaning it is defined as suitable for higher density residential growth. This area is almost entirely a National Register Historic District. Not only is this pocket of the neighborhood irreplaceable and deemed so by the U.S. Department of the Interior, but it also happens to be an intact neighborhood where people live. There are very few vacant lots in The Column. There isn’t even a public park. A former public elementary school building has been adaptively reused into 10 apartments as has Carpenter Mills, but aside from locating a few spaces for accessory dwelling units, and a few large yards, there is virtually no place for Enhanced Growth, other than knocking down the existing homes.
Though the language of the Comp Plan states that demolition will be discouraged in Enhanced Growth areas, the maps show a different future than the words do. In fact, the Land Use section’s entire premise seems contradictory with the preservation language in the Built Environment Section because it expressly labels National Register and National Register eligible neighborhoods as Growth Corridors and Enhanced Growth areas. If the maps say enhanced growth, it is difficult to imagine how homes won’t be purchased by developers for demolition and taller infill construction, displacing families.
While much of this language around design excellence, preservation, and neighborhood character is on point, it does not conform with the maps, and to quote the Plan, the maps are the “most significant influence on the zoning ordinance, land development, subdivision review regulations & ultimately on projects that get built in the city.” The possibility for massive urban renewal exists without protections for people’s homes.
Community comment makes a difference
The Comprehensive Plan must be re-written every decade, and in the last two iterations, a coalition of neighbors inserted themselves and changed the process. In 2004, the city proposed to make zoning changes before/without an approved Comp Plan, causing a public outcry calling for “Plan First”. Then, in 2014, neighborhood concerns were so strong, the Planning Department stopped work on the Comp Plan and created Neighborhood Plans for each of the 25 neighborhoods, first. The result was a lot more specificity, oftentimes down to specific plats and lots from neighbors themselves, and ultimately, they were used to create the Comp Plan.
The 2024 proposed Comp Plan is inherently vague. Lawyer Deming Sherman, who was a significant player in inserting public input into the past two Comp Plans, has said again and again that the Comp Plan is like the Bible in that it can be interpreted in many ways. The vagueness is dangerous, and in hearings, the language of the Comp Plan is often used against residents’ concerns.
For example, the Zoning Code (based on the Comprehensive Plan) establishes the height limit for each part of the city, and is the understood maximum height allowed. But, via something called a “Bonus Incentive”, if a developer agrees to include affordable unit/s or to build in a sustainable way, they are allowed to violate that height limit and build a floor or two taller. Since the Comp Plan declares that sustainability and affordable housing are citywide priorities, why not require every development to have affordable housing (inclusionary zoning) and be sustainable/net zero/all-electric? Both should be flat out requirements for each and every development.
Interestingly enough, when residents want to create or expand an overlay zone (i.e. local historic district) Planning asks for signatures from 50% of the landowners indicating support and also requires further study on each building, a much more onerous process than the one the Planning Department uses for map changes. Not a single signature is needed and no further study, yet the effect has, without doubt, a far greater impact on residents. That is why the Comp Plan process is the opportunity for people to put the changes they want into city ordinance, no signature or further study needed.
Demolishing the city in the name of growth?
This time around, with a focus on growth, many people are concerned that the result will be demolition and displacement citywide, and that it will not achieve the goal of providing more housing for the people that need it and for the people that live here. In fact, many recent projects have demolished existing buildings, only to build luxury housing.
7% of Providence is in a Local Historic District; 28% in a National Register Historic District (unprotected but with documented value); 90% of Providence buildings are over 75 years old (unprotected & not documented but most certainly have value and are, besides, people’s homes). Is it fair that just that 7% of irreplaceable resources are protected? And the rest of the city is not? Existing buildings are the city’s most sustainable housing resource, so The Comprehensive Plan needs more emphasis on gentle density, on addressing affordable housing, on design review process changes, on avoiding demolition, and on including community voices.
Chair Michael Gazdacko concluded the CPC meeting thanking everyone for their comments and civility and reminding the audience that the next step is for the plan to go to the City Council for their review and eventual vote. Between now and then (which is projected to be September or October) residents can contact their city councilor with input on the proposed map changes. They can walk through Providence neighborhoods to look at existing buildings, at the infill buildings -good and bad- and at available underutilized spaces and compare them to the maps in the comp plan. By continuing to work with the Planning Department and the City Council, there is an opportunity for the community voice to be heard, to make tweaks to the plan as submitted, and to maintain our historic built environment while at the same time increasing density, albeit “gently”. The impact of this plan will be significant, and it is important to get it right. Providence has a reputation of moving rivers and saving its past for the future; getting density right is in our wheelhouse.
Kari Lang served as the Executive Director of the West Broadway Neighborhood Association (WBNA) from 1995-2021. She has a Master’s degree from the Center for the Conservation of Historic Towns and Buildings, KU Leuven, Belgium where people have been balancing preservation and density for centuries longer than we have.
