This layer represents Zoning District boundaries indicating geographic areas subject to specific zoning guidelines. Developed and maintained by the Planning Department GIS in accordance with the Boston Zoning Code.

This layer represents City of Boston Zoning Subdistrict boundaries indicating geographic areas subject to specific zoning guidelines. Developed and maintained by the Planning Department GIS in accordance with the Boston Zoning Code.

City of Boston parking meters. Updated and maintained by Boston Transportation Department (BTD) Parking Clerk.

The files linked to this reference are the geospatial data created as part of the completion of the baseline vegetation inventory project for the NPS park unit. Current format is ArcGIS file geodatabase but older formats may exist as shapefiles. After the field sampling was complete, aerial photograph signatures were verified for all of the associations using the classification plot data, Bell et al. (2002), and Elliman (2004) and (2005) data. These signatures were extrapolated to other areas within the park boundary that were not sampled. Using ARCGIS 9.1, polygon boundaries in the preliminary vegetation map were further edited and refined to develop a draft association-level vegetation map. Polygons were updated with USNVC association names and codes based on the classification plot data. Polygons that were attributed with land use - land cover categories in the preliminary vegetation map retained their attributes. The aerial photointerpretation key was updated. The thematic accuracy of this 2006 draft association-level vegetation association and land use map was then assessed for accuracy.

This map displays data from chapters 1 through 4 of the PLAN South Boston Dorchester Avenue report, which contains the history, current conditions, outreach initiatives, goals, and objectives of a proposed plan to create a new mixed-use urban district in Boston, Massachusetts. The map contains four layers:Study AreaFuture DevelopmentsParcelsZoningThis map is intended for use in the Storify a planning report tutorial, which details the process of creating a story in ArcGIS StoryMaps for the plan. The story includes maps and a scene that showcase the proposed district. The plan itself was created by the Boston Planning & Development Agency (BPDA).

This reference contains the imagery data used in the completion of the baseline vegetation inventory project for the NPS park unit. Orthophotos, raw imagery, and scanned aerial photos are common files held here. High-quality existing photography housed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Office of Geographic and Environmental Information (MassGIS) was used as the base for the BOHA vegetation map. A true color orthophotomosaic was developed from a set of digital 1:5,000 scale medium resolution true color aerial images that are considered the new "basemap" for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts by MassGIS and the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs (EOEA) until 2005 DOQs became available in 2006 (MassGIS 2007). The photography for the entire commonwealth was captured in April 2005 when deciduous trees were mostly bare and the ground was generally free of snow. The image type is 4-band (RGBN) natural color (Red, Green, Blue) and Near infrared in 8 bits (values ranging 0-255) per band format.

The 1:100,000-scale geologic map of the South Boston 30' x 60' quadrangle, Virginia and North Carolina, provides geologic information for the Piedmont along the I-85 and U.S. Route 58 corridors and in the Roanoke River watershed, which includes the John H. Kerr Reservoir and Lake Gaston. The Raleigh terrane (located on the eastern side of the map) contains Neoproterozoic to early Paleozoic(?) polydeformed, amphibolite-facies gneisses and schists. The Carolina slate belt of the Carolina terrane (located in the central part of the map) contains Neoproterozoic metavolcanic and metasedimentary rocks at greenschist facies. Although locally complicated, the slate-belt structure mapped across the South Boston map area is generally a broad, complex anticlinorium of the Hyco Formation (here called the Chase City anticlinorium) and is flanked to the west and east by synclinoria, which are cored by the overlying Aaron and Virgilina Formations. The western flank of the Carolina terrane (located in the western-central part of the map) contains similar rocks at higher metamorphic grade. This terrane includes epidote-amphibolite-facies to amphibolite-facies gneisses of the Neoproterozoic Country Line complex, which extends north-northeastward across the map. The Milton terrane (located on the western side of the map) contains Ordovician amphibolite-facies metavolcanic and metasedimentary gneisses of the Cunningham complex. Crosscutting relations and fabrics in mafic to felsic plutonic rocks constrain the timing of Neoproterozoic to late Paleozoic deformations across the Piedmont. In the eastern part of the map, a 5- to 9-kilometer-wide band of tectonic elements that contains two late Paleozoic mylonite zones (Nutbush Creek and Lake Gordon) and syntectonic granite (Buggs Island pluton) separates the Raleigh and Carolina terranes. Amphibolite-facies, infrastructural metaigneous and metasedimentary rocks east of the Lake Gordon mylonite zone are generally assigned to the Raleigh terrane. In the western part of the map area, a 5- to 8-kilometer-wide band of late Paleozoic tectonic elements includes the Hyco and Clover shear zones, syntectonic granitic sheets, and amphibolite-facies gneisses along the western margin of the Carolina terrane at its boundary with the Milton terrane. This band of tectonic elements is also the locus for early Mesozoic extensional faults associated with the early Mesozoic Scottsburg, Randolph, and Roanoke Creek rift basins. The map shows fluvial terrace deposits of sand and gravel on hills and slopes near the Roanoke and Dan Rivers. The terrace deposits that are highest in altitude are the oldest. Saprolite regolith is spatially associated with geologic source units and is not shown separately on the map. Mineral resources in the area include gneiss and granite quarried for crushed stone, tungsten-bearing vein deposits of the Hamme district, and copper and gold deposits of the Virgilina district. Surface-water resources are abundant and include rivers, tributaries, the John H. Kerr Reservoir, and Lake Gaston. Groundwater flow is concentrated in saprolite regolith, along fractures in the crystalline bedrock, and along fractures and bedding-plane partings in the Mesozoic rift basins.

This map displays 2018 zoning in the area around Dorchester Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts. This zoning information is useful to the PLAN South Boston Dorchester Avenue report, which contains the history, current conditions, outreach initiatives, goals, and objectives of a proposed plan to create a new mixed-use urban district in Boston, Massachusetts.This map is intended for use in the Storify a planning report tutorial, which details the process of creating a story in ArcGIS StoryMaps for the plan. The story includes maps and a scene that showcase the proposed district. In particular, this map is used in a web app that compares current zoning to the plan's proposed zoning. The plan itself was created by the Boston Planning & Development Agency (BPDA).

The Coastal Flood Resilience Zoning Overlay District goes beyond the areas identified in FEMA flood maps, applying to areas of the City that could be inundated during a major coastal storm event, known as a 1 percent chance flood event with 40-inches of sea level rise. The zoning overlay promotes resilient planning and design, provides consistent standards for the review of projects, and maximizes the benefits of investments in coastal resilience.

These ESRI shape files are of National Park Service tract and boundary data that was created by the Land Resources Division. Bounds of the tracts and islands are photo interpreted from 1996 ortho photo mosaics created by the University of Rhode Island for the park. Tracts and islands are consistent with the legislated boundaries defined by PL 104-333 which also references map number BOHA 80,002. Tracts are numbered and created by the regional cartographic staff at the Land Resources Program Centers and are associated to the Land Status Maps. This data should be used to display properties that NPS owns and properties that NPS may have some type of interest such as scenic easements or right of ways.

This data set contains the sun-illuminated topographic imagery and backscatter intensity generated from a multibeam sonar survey of the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary region off Boston, Massachusetts, an area of approximately 1100 square nautical miles. The Stellwagen Bank NMS Mapping Project is designed to provide detailed maps of the Stellwagen Bank region's environments and habitats and the first complete multibeam topographic and sea floor characterization maps of a significant region of the shallow EEZ. Data were collected on four cruises over a two year period from the fall of 1994 to the fall of 1996. The surveys were conducted aboard the Canadian Hydrographic Service vessel Frederick G. Creed, a SWATH (Small Waterplane Twin Hull) ship that surveys at speeds of up to 16 knots. The multibeam data were collected utilizing a Simrad Subsea EM 1000 Multibeam Echo Sounder (95 kHz) that is permanently installed in the hull of the Creed.

Area of potential coastal and riverine flooding in Boston under various sea level rise scenarios (9-inch in 2030s, 21-inch in 2050s, and 36-inch in 2070s) at high tide and in the event of storms with an annual exceedance probability (AEP) of 10 and 1 percent.Learn more about the projections from Climate Ready Boston’s Projections Consensus and data methodology in Climate Ready Boston’s Vulnerability Assessment. Source: Coastal flood hazard data created as part of Climate Ready Boston are a reanalysis of the coastal flood hazard data developed as part of the MassDOT-FHWA analysis. In 2015, MassDOT released an analysis of coastal flood hazards using state-of-the-art numerical models capable of simulating thousands of potential nor’easters and tropical storms coincident with a range of tide levels, riverine flow rates in the Charles and Mystic Rivers, and sea level rise conditions.Definitions:9-inch Sea Level Rise: By the end of the 2050s, 9 inches of sea level rise is expected consistently across emissions scenarios and is likely to occur as early as the 2030s. 9” Climate scenario and coastal/riverine hazard flooding data are the MassDOT-FHWA high sea level rise scenario for 2030. Actual sea level rise value is 0.62 feet above 2013 tide levels, with an additional 0.74 inches to account for subsidence.21-inch Sea Level Rise: In the second half of the century, 21 inches is expected across all emissions scenarios. 21” Data were interpolated from the MassDOT-FHWA 2030 and 2070/2100 data.36-inch Sea Level Rise: The highest sea level rise considered, 36 inches, is highly probable toward the end of the century. This scenario has a greater than 50 percent chance of occurring within this time period for the moderate emissions reduction and business-as-usual scenarios and a nearly 50 percent chance for the major emissions reduction scenario. 36” Climate scenario and coastal/riverine hazard fooding data are the MassDOT-FHWA high sea level rise scenario for 2070/intermediate sea level rise scenario for 2100. Actual sea level rise value is 3.2 feet above 2013 tide levels, with an additional 2.5 inches to account for subsidence.High Tide: Average monthly high tide is approximately two feet higher than the commonly used mean higher high water (MHHW, the average of the higher high water levels of each tidal day), and lower than king tides (the twice-a year high tides that occur when the gravitational pulls of the sun and the moon are aligned).10% Annual Flood: A “10 percent annual chance flood” is a flood event that has a 1 in 10 chance of occurring in any given year. Another name for this flood, which is the primary coastal flood hazard delineated in FEMA FIRMs, is the “10-year flood.”1% Annual Flood: A “1 percent annual chance flood” is a flood event that has a 1 in 100 chance of occurring in any given year. Another name for this flood, which is the primary coastal flood hazard delineated in FEMA FIRMs, is the “100-year flood.”

This data contains the scores from the Residential Displacement Risk Map, created by the Mayor’s Office of Housing (MOH) and released in March of 2025. The Residential Displacement Risk Map is Boston’s first interactive map measuring current displacement pressures and levels of residential displacement risk across Boston. The map aims to increase understanding of this challenge, and will be updated every couple of years to keep track of changing patterns.

This map is part of Boston’s first ever Anti-Displacement Action Plan. The Action Plan responds to residential, small business, and cultural displacement with new tools to fill gaps in Boston’s existing anti-displacement toolkit. It will also better position the City to target resources to people, places, and spaces at greatest risk of displacement, and it includes recommendations for how to use this map in planning, policy, and development decision making.

The Residential Displacement Risk Map can also be used to raise awareness of displacement and housing instability challenges and provide a data-driven understanding of displacement risk. It is meant to be used by the City, residents, community organizations, academics, housing advocates, and more.

The Residential Displacement Risk Map measures community-level displacement, meaning how likely it is for high numbers of households to be displaced from an area, changing its fundamental demographic makeup. The Residential Displacement Risk Map does not measure household- or individual-level displacement risk, or how likely it is for any one household or individual to be displaced. Those who live in a high-risk area will not necessarily be displaced. The map only paints a general picture of an area’s sensitivity to displacement pressures. A higher score indicates a higher risk of displacement.

The Residential Displacement Risk Map measures direct displacement (when residents are forced to move from their homes, such as in an eviction or a foreclosure) and estimates economic displacement (when current residents of an area can no longer afford to live there). The map uses direct displacement as a guidepost for predicting where economic displacement is likely to occur, based on a variety of characteristics that are associated with direct displacement. If an area has high direct displacement (evictions and foreclosures), then it is likely to also have high economic displacement. More detail on how the Residential Displacement Risk Map measures risk can be found in the technical documentation linked below.

The Displacement Risk Map can be directly accessed here: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/177e64a85f4041d2b4655d7cd1991c56/

Learn more about the City’s Anti-Displacement Action Plan here: https://www.boston.gov/departments/planning-advisory-council/anti-displacement-action-plan#:~:text=It%20lays%20out%20priority%20policies,and%20preserving%20existing%20affordable%20housing

Technical documentation for the map can be accessed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ctv0S67Rx5GA46GbY_Glo_y-JYoQRCMS336yPDw_18o/edit?usp=sharing

This data is a qualitatively-derived interpretative polygon shapefile defining the bottom types of the seafloor from Boston Harbor and the harbor approaches, Massachusetts. Approximately 170 km square of sidescan sonar and bathymetric data were collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Ship Whiting in 2000 and 2001 and reprocessed and gridded by the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management (CZM) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Boston Neighborhood Boundaries represent a combination of zoning neighborhood boundaries, zip code boundaries and 2010 census tract boundaries. These boundaries are used in the broad sense for visualization purposes, research analysis and planning studies. However these boundaries are not official neighborhood boundaries for the City of Boston. The BPDA is not responsible for any districts or boundaries within the City of Boston except for the districts we use for planning purposes.

TO VIEW A GLOSSARY OF TERMS FOR THE DIRECTORY - CLICK HERE

WHAT IS THIS TRACKER FOR?

The City of Boston is committed to increasing transparency in the processes around the Zoning Board of Appeal (ZBA). The Inspectional Services Department (ISD) at the City is tasked with ensuring compliance with the zoning code. If an application for a permit is refused because of a zoning violation, applicants are able to appeal the decision to the ZBA and ask for an exception, sometimes known as a “variance.” If the ZBA grants relief, then the appellant is able to continue with the process of obtaining a permit.

In order to provide greater transparency in the ZBA process, the City of Boston Zoning Board of Appeal tracker is now available on Analyze Boston. Each record in this tracker represents an appeal of a denied permit application; the original permit application is known as the “parent application.” To find out more information about the original permit application, visit our Permit Finder tool. To view a map of this data, visit our ZBA Tracker Map Tool.

To learn more about the ZBA process and how to file an appeal, visit our website.

WHAT DOES EACH STATUS MEAN?

Appeal Submitted - indicates that an appeal of a zoning refusal was successfully submitted into ISD’s tracking system, either in-person at ISD (1010 Massachusetts Ave.) or through the online application portal.

More Information:

• For detailed information on how to file an appeal, see this page on the ISD website.

Next steps:

• The appeal will undergo an initial review by City staff to ensure that all necessary information and documentation has been included.
• The appellant must pay a fee.

Community Process - indicates that City staff have completed their review and signed off for the appeal process to move onto getting community feedback.

Contact Information:

• Use the link below to find the Neighborhood Liaison from the Office of Neighborhood Services for the application’s location.

Next steps:

• The appellant will work with the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services to engage with people who own adjacent properties, members of the local community, and other relevant stakeholders.

• Depending on the type of project, the Boston Planning and Development Agency may also conduct a review.

Hearing Scheduled - indicates that the appeal has been scheduled for a committee or subcommittee meeting of the ZBA. For this to take place, the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services has notified ISD that the appellant has adequately engaged with the community that would be affected, should the zoning relief be granted.

Attendance Information:

• View a schedule of hearings at the ZBA webpage. Select an Upcoming Hearing to find the list of topics and how to attend.

Next steps:

• The appellant will attend the hearing in person (or through the virtual meeting). The appellant will provide the ZBA with reasons why an exception or variance to the zoning code should be granted and answer any questions from the ZBA.

• At the hearing, members of the public will be able to testify in support or against the appeal.

• The ZBA will discuss the appeal and vote to approve or deny.

Alternatively:

• The appellant can request a deferral; if allowed by the ZBA, during the hearing the appeal will receive a new hearing date.

• The appellant can withdraw the application; if allowed by the ZBA, it can be withdrawn without prejudice.

Hearing Rescheduled - indicates that the appeal’s scheduled committee meeting has been changed. This can happen for several reasons. For example, the appellant can request a deferral if they need more time to complete or update plans, or the board can defer an appeal if a quorum isn’t present (perhaps due to a recusal). A request for deferral is approved by the board, which also selects a new hearing date.

Next steps:

• Same as Hearing Scheduled above.

Hearing Concluded - indicates that the hearing has taken place. The appeal could have been approved, denied, deferred, or withdrawn, with or without additional requirements.

Additional Information:

• Meeting minutes from each committee meeting are available to download from the ZBA webpage.

Next steps:

• The ZBA Executive Secretary finalizes the Board’s decision in writing or the appellant’s attorney submits a finalized decision for ISD Legal Team review.

ZBA Decision Finalized - indicates the date on the ZBA’s written decision letter. The decision is listed under the ‘result’ field.

Next steps:

• Neighboring property owners are notified of the decision shortly after this date

• Beginning on the Final Decision Date, neighboring property owners and other involved parties who disagree with the ZBA’s decision have twenty days to file an appeal in Suffolk County Superior Court or Boston Housing Court. (For detailed information on the Zoning Commission and appeal process, please refer to Chapter 665 of the Acts of 1956, available here)

Appeal Closed - indicates the appeal’s outcome has been finalized and the twenty day Appeal period has ended.

Next steps:

• Depending on the ZBA decision, the appellant may or may not be able to continue the process for seeking the permit for which zoning relief was requested.

• If the ZBA approved or sustained with proviso, the appellant must take additional steps before continuing the permitting process.

WHAT DOES EACH RESULT MEAN?

Approved - means the zoning relief requested has been granted.

Approved with Proviso - means the zoning relief requested has been granted, with some conditions that must be fulfilled before the permitting process can continue. These conditions will be detailed in the written decision of the ZBA. Examples of such conditions could include: having the Boston Planning and Development Agency review updated plans; submitting more detailed plans; or obtaining additional engineer reports.

Denied - means the zoning relief requested was not granted. The appellant must wait a year before submitting a new appeal on a project for the same site.

Denied without Prejudice - means the zoning relief requested was not granted. However, the appellant only has to wait thirty days before submitting an appeal on a new project at the same site.

Withdrawn - means the appellant has chosen to remove the appeal from the ZBA’s consideration. The appellant does not have to wait a year to appeal the same zoning violations.

Note: If there is no result listed, it means that the ZBA has not issued its final written decision on the appeal. This may be the case even for appeals that have been heard by the ZBA.

HOW DO I USE THIS TRACKER?

This tracker is designed for members of the public and City of Boston employees to be able to quickly search for a specific appeal that has been submitted to the ZBA, or to search for appeals based on criteria such as location or primary contact, in order to identify the status of the appeal.

Below, under the "Data and Resources" header, you will see the "Zoning Board of Appeal Tracker" dataset:

• To look at the directory - click the "Preview" button and you will be taken to a spreadsheet-like view of the directory data.

• To expand the number of applications available to scroll through, click the "Show _ Entries" drop down at the top left of the data table and select your desired number. Alternatively, you can scroll to the bottom right of the dataset and select your desired page number.

• To search the tracker - use the search box to the top right of the data table to search for any keyword in the dataset. For example, if you are looking for a certain contact, type the name into the search box and see what comes back.

• To filter the data, click the blue "Add Filter" link at the top left of the data table, select the field you would like to filter on, and select the corresponding value of that field that you would like to display. For example - if you wanted to show applications for properties in Charlestown, you would click "Add Filter", select the "city" field, and select "Charlestown". You can add multiple filters.

• To sort the data based on a specific field, click the arrows next to the field name to sort in either ascending or descending order.

• To hide columns that aren't relevant to you, click the blue "Hide/Unhide Columns" button at the top right of the data table, and click on the desired column names. Hidden column names will be highlighted in white. To unhide a column, simply click it again.

• The Data Dictionary - which explains what each field means and what the values of each field mean - is available as a table below the directory, and is also

This site pulls the historical maps that are applicable to the area or region you’ve focused on and works with Google Maps to overlay them as accurately as possible. See instructions.

Boston Fire Department (BFD) district boundaries per general order of the fire department. New districts went into effect on 8/3/2011. This data was last updated on 9/22/2015 by BFD personnel. Boundaries are coincident with the Street Address Management (SAM) conflated street centerline data. Purpose was for use in new CAD system provided by Intergraph. Boundaries of districts created using newest version of city boundary provided by 2010 Census data.

Noise pollution in cities has major negative effects on the health of both humans and wildlife. Using iPhones, we collected sound-level data at hundreds of locations in four areas of Boston, Massachusetts (USA) before, during, and after the fall 2020 pandemic lockdown, during which most people were required to remain at home. These spatially dispersed measurements allowed us to make detailed maps of noise pollution that are not possible when using standard fixed sound equipment. The four sites were: the Boston University campus (which sits between two highways), the Fenway/Longwood area (which includes an urban park and several hospitals), Harvard Square (home of Harvard University), and East Boston (a residential area near Logan Airport). Across all four sites, sound levels averaged 6.4 dB lower during the pandemic lockdown than after. Fewer high noise measurements occurred during lockdown as well. The resulting sound maps highlight noisy locations such as traffic intersections and quiet locations such as parks. This project demonstrates that changes in human activity can reduce noise pollution and that simple smartphone technology can be used to make highly detailed maps of noise pollution that identify sources of high sound levels potentially harmful to humans in urban environments.