Evidence-led research.Homes neighbors can afford.Streets worth loving.
The Allston Heritage Foundation
A historic commercial block in Allston.
Latest research
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Boston needs about 110,000 more homes to bring rents back within reach
A quantitative housing target for Boston, Allston-Brighton and the region, and the zoning reforms needed to meet it.
Traditional-looking buildings can be built at ordinary apartment costs
Our cost pressure test of fourteen street concepts, and objective design rules that could make them legal by right.
Allston built beauty for the middle class, and we can do it again
A field guide to what makes Allston’s older buildings work: symmetry, solid bases, rhythm and grand entrances.
Ready-to-file language for the City Council, the Zoning Commission and Beacon Hill
A zoning petition, a City Council order and a state enabling act that put the plan into law.
A ten-year plan for 14,500 new homes in Allston-Brighton
Most of the homes would go on main streets, large parcels and sites near transit, under clear rules that everyone knows in advance.
Explore the plan
Rigorous research, written for neighbors
We start from data and peer-reviewed economics, state our assumptions, show our math and publish our sources. When our numbers change, we say so.
Then we translate the findings into plain language and practical proposals that a neighbor, a city councilor or a builder can act on.
How we workTwo programs, one goal: a neighborhood people can afford to love
Zoning & Housing
How many homes Boston and Allston-Brighton need, where they could go, what they cost to build, and the model laws that would let them be built.
Explore zoning & housingArchitecture & Urban Design
What makes Allston’s historic streets beautiful, why many new buildings fall short, and how to bring the old virtues back at middle-class prices.
Explore architectureDrag the slider to see a one-story strip become homes above shops
We used AI image tools to sketch what our proposed design rules would permit on real Allston-Brighton sites. Then we priced them. The answer: about $400–$450 per square foot for a simple four-story brick block, in line with ordinary Boston apartment construction.
See all fifteen concepts
TodayAI concept
Rooted here, thinking about all of New England
Allston was built by drovers and streetcar builders, by Irish, Italian, Jewish, Chinese, Brazilian and Korean families, and by generations of students. Each wave inherited something good and left something better.
We want to keep that going. Our work starts here, and its lessons apply to Boston and the whole region.
About the Foundation