Marie Mercurio, a senior planner for the Boston Redevelopment Authority who led the planning and zoning process, said she and her team heard loud and clear from residents that they liked Hyde Park’s suburban feel and wanted the neighborhood to remain that way.
She recalled being “laughed out of the room” at one meeting where planners suggested ambitious changes to the code.
“We’re really trying to tell people this is not going to create high-scale, high-density development,” Mercurio said. Instead, she predicted there would be slow change over time in Cleary and Logan squares, a gradual infill of taller buildings to replace some low, aging buildings in the business district. 
(Boston Redevelopment Authority)A map of the new zoning designations. To help maintain the neighborhood’s open spaces — which make up a full 35 percent of its acreage — the new zoning code includes protective districts for green spaces and for the Neponset River and Mother Brook. There are also newly designated historic districts for the neighborhood’s distinctive 19th-century homes, built when Hyde Park was still an independent town, before being annexed to Boston 100 years ago.
Bob Fondren, chair of the zoning commission, asked why there was no maximum number of off-street parking spaces for residential units, and Mercurio explained that neighborhood residents had no appetite for such a measure.
She said there had been some interest in reducing parking requirements for the business district, but it had come too late in the planning process to become part of the document. With more support, she said, that could become the first amendment to the zoning article. Fondren suggested the BRA also look at adding a maximum number of spaces as part of that amendment.
