Cambridge Codified Citywide Urban Design Objectives

Cambridge’s citywide urban design objectives, which are codified to provide “guidance to property owners and the general public as to the city’s policies,” note at § 19.38 that “[d]development should be resilient to the effects of climate change as anticipated in the Resilient Cambridge plan published by the City,” and that one key indicator of whether that is taking place is whether the “design uses resilience strategies that have environmental co-benefits. An example is passive building envelope design, which promotes occupant comfort during extreme heat and resilience from power outages due to storms while also reducing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Another example is intensive vegetation at grade and on roofs, which provides cooling benefits while improving stormwater management.”