Catie Gould wrote:

What can you do with half-empty parking lots at struggling strip malls and shopping centers?

A lot, according to a report released last month by Boston’s Metropolitan Area Planning Council. MAPC’s analysis of the region’s 3,024 strip malls found that redeveloping just the best-suited 10 percent of them per town into mixed-use housing and commercial space could provide 125,000 new homes for the Boston metro region.

This change alone could entirely fulfill the need for 120,000 to 140,000 new multi-family homes that the regional planning agency has estimated it must add by 2030 to keep pace with demand.