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Launching the Massachusetts Zoning Atlas

In partnership with:
Suffolk University
Date and time
Friday, July 18, 2025

John Infranca of Suffolk University Law School and Sara Bronin of the National Zoning Atlas launch the Massachusetts Zoning Atlas, the first resource to comprehensively visualize zoning conditions across the 352 zoning jurisdictions in the Commonwealth.

The Massachusetts Zoning Atlas compiles data from more than 46,000 pages of zoning codes and includes information for over 5,500 zoning districts. It presents this data in an accessible, interactive map that displays key zoning information for each district and enables users to make apples-to-apples comparisons of zoning codes across cities and towns.

They share how the zoning atlas was created and demonstrate how it can be used to analyze zoning throughout the state. Abundant Housing Massachusetts Executive Director Jesse Kanson-Benanav and Citizens' Housing and Planing Association Director of Municipal Engagement Lily Linke share remarks as they discuss how legislators, housing advocates, and the general public can enlist the Atlas to inform zoning reform efforts, support legislative campaigns, aid public education on zoning’s impact and effects, and enable new inroads for scholarly land use research.

The Massachusetts Zoning Atlas is part of the National Zoning Atlas, a project of Land Use Atlas, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization working to digitize, demystify, and democratize zoning information about zoning conditions in more than 33,000 jurisdictions in the United States.

Explore the Massachusetts Zoning Atlas at https://www.zoningatlas.org/atlas.

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John Infranca
John Infranca is Professor of Law and Director of Faculty Scholarship & Research at Suffolk University Law School. He will serve as a visiting professor of law at Yale Law School in Spring 2026, teaching courses in land use law and election law.
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Sara Bronin
Sara C. Bronin is a Mexican-American architect, attorney, George Washington University professor, and policymaker whose interdisciplinary work focuses on how law and policy can foster more equitable, sustainable, well-designed, and connected places. She wrote Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World, and she founded and leads the National Zoning Atlas, which is digitizing, demystifying, and democratizing information about zoning in the United States.
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Lily Linke
Lily Linke is the Director of Municipal Engagement for Citizens' Housing and Planning Association (CHAPA). In her role, she oversees the Municipal Engagement Initiative (MEI), which works directly with local advocates to build pro-housing coalitions; the MBTA Communities Engagement Technical Assistance Program (aka 3ATA), which supports planners in their efforts to implement Section 3A; and a wide array of educational programming.
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Jesse Kanson-Benanav
Jesse Kanson-Benanav is the Executive Director of Abundant Housing MA where he oversees all aspects of the organization's mission to stand up for abundant housing for all in communities across Massachusetts. Jesse brings to this role nearly 20 years experience in the affordable housing industry where he's worked as a community organizer, policy consultant, and most recently as a developer of affordable homes at a number nonprofits serving Massachusetts and New England.
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