By Doug Hanna
It's been a couple of years since Cambridge and Somerville relaxed their zoning ordinances regarding living space in basements. It's now far easier to increase the floor-to-ceiling dimension far beyond the 7 foot mark, which defines living space, without running afoul of FAR (floor area ratio) regulations. "You can dig to China if you want to," was how a building inspector in Somerville responded when I asked how far we could lower a basement slab.
Read more...As we see and hear about the epic flooding and destruction in Houston, it's hard to imagine what the Boston area would look like if it suffered a similar storm. We are located on the Atlantic coast, and huge hurricanes can happen here (1938 and 1954, among others).
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