Reference Library

East Providence Comprehensive Plan 2025 to 2035

City of East Providence, prepared with Horsley Witten Group. Adopted by the City Council August 19, 2025. Free to download from the City at the link below.

The Comprehensive Plan is the legal foundation under everything East Providence builds. State law requires every city to keep one and requires our zoning to be consistent with it. This 317 page edition, approved by the Planning Board, adopted by the City Council on August 19, 2025, and approved by Rhode Island Statewide Planning, runs from 2025 to 2035. Where zoning and the plan disagree, the plan wins and the zoning must change. Housing starts on page 13.

Here is why it matters. One in three East Providence households is cost burdened. The plan’s answer is Goal H3, and Policy H3.6 on page 33 lists the tools: two-family homes in more neighborhoods, a new 3-to-6 unit category, 7-plus units by right on commercial corridors, an accessory dwelling unit ordinance, inclusionary zoning, lower parking minimums. The “small a” playbook, already adopted as city policy.

Now the work is zoning. Each action carries a priority and a deadline in the implementation table on page 277. Hold the council to it.