By Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries and letters to the Editor of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)

I do, and I hear constantly from people who feel the same way. Somerville is not some cookie cutter community with subdivisions and chain stores sprawling across it, where you only see your neighbors when you drive past each other. We’re not like everywhere else. We live closer together. We live above and below each other. So we get to know the people in our neighborhood, and in a lot of cases they’re people we’d have never met anywhere else. Stories abound of strangers living in two- and three-families who connected and now take care of each other like family. Others share yards, street parties and play groups. We may not think about it too often, but the shape and form of Somerville’s neighborhoods are a big part of what builds such walkable, interesting and tight-knit communities here.

Unfortunately, our current residential zoning makes it difficult to build something like Somerville in Somerville. The numbers behind this are shocking. There are two different zoning designations that cover the more than 11,000 one-, two- and three-family homes in our city. They account for 80% of our properties and 60% of our land area. Out of all of those properties, only 22 homes citywide actually conform to our existing zoning regulations. I know that sounds preposterous that the number could be so low, but that’s because it is preposterous.

If you don’t happen to be in one of those 22 properties, it becomes an unnecessary challenge to make changes to your home. We say we want families to stay in Somerville, but our zoning code makes it exceedingly difficult to gain more space for a new child by, say, converting your attic or basement to usable living space. Adding or altering a porch also can leave you buried in red tape. That’s because our city is filled with non-conforming homes.

Even worse, when there is an open residential lot on a street otherwise lined by one- to three-family homes, our current zoning code makes it easier to construct a hulking apartment building that doesn’t fit into your neighborhood than a home or homes that do. This goes against what people told us repeatedly when we developed our SomerVision comprehensive plan: they told us they love the character of our neighborhoods. To help maintain that character in our established residential neighborhoods, common sense should dictate that you should build one- and two-family homes on streets lined with one- and two-family homes. Yet common sense has nothing to do with Somerville’s zoning regulations.

Our current zoning rules were put together in 1990 and they reflect the politics of the time, not the existing character of, or a future vision for, our city. By turning Somerville into a mishmash of nonconforming structures, we politicized what should be a customer service process. That 1990 code forces you to go through the local political structure to get just about any home improvement or project done. At the same time, that hulking apartment building could pop up seemingly at random. There are few hard and fast rules, the regulations are often self-contradictory and the whole system is confusing even to seasoned developers. For the average homeowner, it is beyond daunting.

Our current zoning also pits neighbors against each other and often leaves hard feelings on all sides of a development tussle because the rules are so murky. No matter how even-handed everyone tries to be, inconsistencies are guaranteed. Theoretically, what gets allowed on one street could be denied one block over. It is a system that does not deserve so much as a moment’s defense.

The character of our neighborhoods should not be beholden to chance. We need clear, comprehensible rules to which everyone adheres. The chaos must be weeded out of the process. On the bright side, in SomerVision we have blueprint for how to reform our residential zoning.

People want to make sure we protect our walkable, family-oriented neighborhoods. Homeowners should be able to make reasonable and modest alterations without suffering an endless quest through city government, and new development in our neighborhoods should mirror the existing buildings and character of those neighborhoods. Larger apartment buildings have a place in our city, on targeted sites in former industrial districts that we’re looking to transform (mostly centered around new MBTA stations).

The idea is to align our zoning with our values. Right now our existing ordinance is completely out of step with the progressive vision that the people of Somerville have laid out in SomerVision. Our rules do not preserve our tight-knit neighborhoods or set out a system for how we will revitalize areas like Boynton Yards and the Inner Belt. Instead we invite developers to build all the wrong things in all the wrong places. Zoning may not be the most thrilling subject, but our code desperately needs to be reformed and updated. And it needs to happen in 2016.

As with all changes of this nature, we have to drill down to make sure we get all the details right. Yet we cannot lose sight of the bigger picture or overlook the pressing need to bring our zoning into alignment with our neighborhood-oriented values and with our community as it currently exists. Rather than a set of regulations that urges people to build something wholly unlike Somerville we should be enhancing the city we love.

The era of a zoning code that eschews much of what makes Somerville such a unique and vibrant place to live needs to come to a rapid end. We need to recognize who we are and to lay out sensible rules for how we move forward. The future of the residential neighborhoods we treasure relies upon it.

This op-ed on residential zoning is the first in an occasional series of op-eds by Mayor Curtatone that will look at different aspects of the proposed zoning overhaul. For more on the overhaul, visit www.somervillema.gov/zoning.