【中美创新时报2025 年 1 月 8 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）经过数十年的士绅化，数千名唐人街居民流离失所，这座城市承诺做出改变。规划人员正在推动对建筑规则进行多方面的更新，他们说这将支持更多经济适用房和小企业发展。《波士顿环球报》记者Danny McDonald对此作了下述报道。
这项努力得到了褒贬不一的评价。倡导者表示，这项举措将有助于维护社区的文化和社会结构，但他们质疑其他他们认为与唐人街的需求不符的因素。
分区计划中可能最强烈地表明与过去决裂的方面将打击催生该社区战斗区的规则。这在很大程度上是一个象征性的举措，因为这个臭名昭著的肮脏窝点的鼎盛时期——曾经是脱衣舞俱乐部、X 级剧院、窥视秀和成人书店的所在地——早已过去。
尽管如此，对于那些支持唐人街的人来说，取消多年来允许该市唯一的成人娱乐区进入他们社区的分区是很重要的。这是对市政府在很大程度上忽视了这个地方的需求和需要的一点补偿，这个地方几代以来一直是移民的避难所。
“唐人街遭受了数十年的犯罪率上升和对社区的负面影响，”唐人街社区土地信托执行董事 Lydia Lowe 说。“这个问题非常重要。”
重新分区讨论——该市提议的变更的评论期即将结束——是在唐人街转型时期进行的，唐人街是波士顿最小的街区之一，是一个在城市核心区拥有丰富历史的民族聚居区。似乎和唐人街的任何人交谈，他们都会说流离失所是他们最大的担忧。人口统计数据也支持了这样一种观点，即高档化的影响继续改变着这个社区。
今年秋天，该市规划部门发布了一份新的分区法规和设计指南草案，该草案“旨在推广经济适用房，强调小企业和文化空间的重要性，并突出唐人街的独特特色”，该部门发言人布列塔尼·科马克在一封电子邮件中表示。
科马克表示，下一次以业主为重点的公开会议将于本月举行，最终建议将在稍后提出。
该提案旨在通过限制该地区部分地区开发项目的高度，更好地保护该社区历史悠久的排屋——唐人街工人阶级的象征，而工人阶级现在正面临流离失所的问题。居民们一直在努力保持这些建筑的可负担性和特色，称它们是这个受到开发影响的社区中最后几个未受影响的地方之一。
根据该计划，项目的最大高度将从目前的 80 英尺降至 45 英尺。 （唐人街的联排房屋通常为三到四层。）市政府表示，其他限制将有助于确保唐人街某个分区的新建筑“与现有联排房屋的大小和规模相似”。
“我们认为这是一个积极的变化，”亚洲社区发展公司房地产总监 Müge Ündemir 表示。
重新分区计划的其他部分正受到质疑或彻底怀疑。
例如，经济适用房覆盖区将允许唐人街部分地区的开发商建造高达 350 英尺的建筑，前提是他们满足两个门槛：60% 的总建筑面积必须用于住宅用途，60% 的住宅单元必须是收入受限的，并符合可负担性标准。虽然倡导者支持在唐人街建造更多经济适用房的想法，但他们认为 35 层楼对于该社区来说太高了。
华人进步会执行董事 Karen Chen 担心，如此高耸的建筑可能会加剧社区的生活质量问题，因为该社区的一些街区已经处于阴影之中，而且由于过去的开发，风洞已经成为现实。
“唐人街已经很小很拥挤了，”Chen 说。“高达 35 层楼简直太荒唐了。”
规划部门通过发言人表示，该覆盖图“反映了该地区近期项目的高度，以及市中心其他地区如何重新划分区域以增加允许的建筑高度，并承认社区的明确优先事项是在开发地块有限的地区为唐人街提供经济适用房。”
其他人则对此类项目中符合经济适用房资格的家庭收入上限持批评态度。根据该市的计划，收入达到该地区中位数的家庭将符合资格。对于单人家庭，上限约为 114,000 美元。
倡导者希望上限要低得多，比如说该地区中位数收入的 60%，即单人家庭约 68,000 美元。他们认为，这将更直接地帮助该社区的工薪阶层和在职穷人。
“可负担性标准需要与社区的现状相匹配，”陈说，他还担心拟议的“过渡区”将导致市中心的豪华住宅楼进一步侵占唐人街。
亚裔社区发展公司执行董事 Angie Liou 对此表示赞同，她表示，鼓励在该社区建造更多经济适用房的总体想法是好的。
“魔鬼真的藏在细节里，”她说。
官方数据显示，唐人街约五分之一平方英里的范围内居住着 4,200 多名居民。（拥护者长期以来一直质疑该社区的人口估计数字严重低估。）
根据城市数据，该社区约 64% 的人口自认为是亚裔或太平洋岛民。一半人口出生在外国，近一半唐人街居民在家讲普通话或粤语。曾经有一段时间，这些数字要高得多。该社区的旧总体规划估计，1990 年，91% 的居民是华人。
唐人街的历史是政治边缘化的历史。战斗区现在被豪华公寓和时尚餐厅占据，这是城市将该社区视为事后考虑的一个典型例子。拉格兰奇街上的两家脱衣舞俱乐部仍然矗立在成人娱乐区，提醒人们曾经的辉煌。根据拟议的分区变更，它们仍将属于这样一个区域，因为它们位于城市认为的唐人街的外面。
社区的发展历史深刻地改变了它，但从未产生过市议员。几十年前，中央动脉和马萨诸塞州收费公路的建设对唐人街造成了相当大的破坏，塔夫茨医疗中心的稳步扩张也蚕食了几个街区。
在当前中产阶级化和流离失所的挑战中，许多第一代移民和工薪阶层的华裔美国人仍然将唐人街视为满足日常需求的地方，就像一个多世纪以来他们所做的那样。平安巷的一块纪念牌匾纪念着这座城市的第一批中国移民，他们从 1875 年开始在那里扎营。
支持者表示，仅靠新的分区并不能阻止中产阶级化，但有些人希望它能对社区产生“镇静作用”。分区规则的执行也很重要。亚洲社区发展公司的 Liou 表示，该市历来定期向唐人街项目提供变更，这产生了累积效应，在很大程度上使现有的分区变得毫无意义。
“如果它写在纸上，却没有人遵守，”Liou 说，“那就毫无意义了。”
题图：埃塞克斯街的行人穿过唐人街的华盛顿街。Lane Turner/环球报工作人员
附原英文报道：
Boston wants to revamp Chinatown zoning. Will it be enough to blunt gentrification?
By Danny McDonald Globe Staff,Updated January 7, 2025,
Pedestrians on Essex Street cross Washington Street in Chinatown.Lane Turner/Globe Staff
After decades of gentrification that has displaced thousands of Chinatown residents, the city is promising change.
Planners are pushing a multifaceted update to building rules they say will support more affordable housing and small business development.
The effort is getting a mixed reception. Advocates say the initiative would help maintain the neighborhood’s cultural and social fabric, but they question other elements that they believe are out of step with Chinatown’s needs.
The aspect of the zoning plan that perhaps most strongly signals a break with the past would strike the rules that gave birth to the Combat Zone in the neighborhood. It would largely be a symbolic move, as the heyday of the notorious den of sleaze — once home to strip clubs, X-rated theaters, peep shows, and adult bookstores — is long past.
Still, for those who advocate for Chinatown, removing a slice of the zoning that for years allowed the city’s only adult entertainment district to be in their neighborhood matters. It’s a modicum of recompense for a time when city authorities largely ignored the wants and needs of a place that has for generations offered a beachhead for immigrants.
“Chinatown suffered decades of increased crime and negative impacts on the community,” said Lydia Lowe, executive director of Chinatown Community Land Trust. “That issue is very important.”
The rezoning discussion — a comment period for the city’s proposed changes ends soon — comes amid a time of transition for Chinatown, one of Boston’s smallest neighborhoods, an ethnic enclave with a rich history in the urban core. Talk to seemingly anyone in Chinatown and they’ll say displacement is their largest concern. And demographic data back up the notion that the effects of gentrification continue to alter the neighborhood.
The city’s planning department this fall released a draft of new zoning regulations and design guidelines that “seek to promote affordable housing, emphasize the significance of small businesses and cultural spaces, and highlight Chinatown’s unique character,” Brittany Comak, a department spokesperson, said in an email.
The next public meeting, focused on property owners, will be held this month, with final recommendations to come later, Comak said.
The proposal looks to better protect the neighborhood’s historic row houses — symbols of Chinatown’s working class, which now faces displacement — by capping how tall developments can be in part of the district. Residents have fought to preserve the affordability and character of those structures, saying they are one of the last untouched pockets of a neighborhood roiled by development.
Under the plan, the maximum height of projects would be 45 feet, down from the current 80 feet. (Chinatown’s row houses tend to be three to four stories.) Other restrictions, according to the city, would help ensure new buildings “would be of similar size and scale to the existing row houses” in a certain subdistrict of Chinatown.
“We find that to be a positive change,” said Müge Ündemir, director of real estate for Asian Community Development Corporation.
Other parts of the rezoning initiative are being met with questions or outright skepticism.
For instance, an affordable housing overlay district would allow developers in parts of Chinatown to build structures up to 350 feet tall, if they meet two thresholds: 60 percent of the gross floor area must be devoted to residential uses, and 60 percent of the residential units must be income-restricted and meet an affordability standard. While advocates support the idea of more affordable housing in Chinatown, 35 stories, they argue, is way too high for the neighborhood.
Karen Chen, executive director of the Chinese Progressive Association, worries that such towering buildings could exacerbate quality-of-life issues in a neighborhood where some blocks are already cast in shadow and wind tunnels are a reality thanks to past development.
“Chinatown is so small and congested already,” said Chen. “Up to 35 stories is just ridiculous.”
Through a spokesperson, the planning department said the overlay “reflects heights of recent projects in the area, how other areas of downtown are being rezoned to increase allowable building height, and acknowledges the clear community priority to deliver affordable housing in Chinatown in an area of limited sites for development.”
Others are critical of the income ceiling for who would qualify for the affordable housing in such projects. Under the city’s plan, households making up to the area median income would qualify. For a one-person household, the cap would be about $114,000.
Advocates want the cap to be much lower, say 60 percent of area median income, which would be about $68,000 for a one-person household. That would more directly help the neighborhood’s working class and working poor, they argue.
“The affordability standard, it needs to match where the neighborhood is at,” said Chen, who also worries that a proposed “transition zone” would contribute to the further encroachment into Chinatown of downtown’s luxury residential towers.
Angie Liou, executive director of the Asian Community Development Corporation, concurs, saying the general idea of incentivizing more affordable housing in the neighborhood is a good one.
“The devil’s really in the details,” she said.
Officially, more than 4,200 residents live within about one-fifth of a square mile that makes up Chinatown. (Advocates have long challenged the population estimate there as severely undercounted.)
According to city figures, about 64 percent of the neighborhood’s population identifies as Asian or Pacific Islander. Half the population is foreign-born, with just under half of all Chinatown residents speaking Mandarin or Cantonese at home. There was a time when those numbers were much higher. An old master plan for the neighborhood estimated that in 1990, 91 percent of residents were Chinese.
Chinatown’s history is one of political marginalization. The Combat Zone, which is now occupied by luxury apartments and trendy restaurants, is a high-profile example of the city treating the neighborhood as an afterthought. Two strip clubs on LaGrange Street still stand in the adult entertainment district as a reminder of what once was. They would remain part of such a district under the proposed zoning changes, as they are located just outside of what the city considers to be Chinatown.
There is a history of development profoundly changing the neighborhood, which has never produced a city councilor. Construction of the Central Artery and the Massachusetts Turnpike took sizable bites out of Chinatown decades ago, and the steady expansion of Tufts Medical Center also ate away at blocks.
Amid current gentrification and displacement challenges, many first-generation immigrants and working-class Chinese Americans still look to Chinatown for their day-to-day needs, as they have for more than a century. A plaque at Ping On Alley memorializes the city’s first Chinese immigrants, who pitched their tents there starting in 1875.
Advocates say new zoning alone won’t stop gentrification, but some hope it could have a “calming effect” on the neighborhood. Enforcement of the zoning rules also matters. Liou, of the Asian Community Development Corporation, said the city has historically given out variances to Chinatown projects on a regular basis, which has had a cumulative effect of largely rendering the existing zoning moot.
“If it’s on the books and no one follows it,” said Liou, “It’s pointless.”
