November 10, 1999
The Honorable Thomas M. Menino
Mayor, City of Boston
One City Hall Plaza
Boston, Massachusetts 02201
Dear Mayor Menino:
The Alliance of Boston Neighborhoods has always advocated a restructuring of the City's planning process by separating long-term comprehensive planning from project review and development. Your tapping of local academic expertise to assist in reviewing the Boston Redevelopment Authority's overall structure will bring a fresh perspective and multi-disciplinary expertise to this long-standing issue.
Enclosed is a working paper on Boston's planning process, prepared by our member neighborhoods to help define an appropriate structure for a new planning entity. Boston's residential neighborhoods, as you have so often said, make & city attractive and vibrant, and community groups need to be included in this discussion as it proceeds.
A comprehensive urban planning process that embraces the principles of environmental sustainability and social justice would be an invaluable service and a unique legacy for you to give to the city and its people. We strongly support an initiative to reconfigure Boston's planning and development functions.
Sincerely,
Shirley Kressel, President
Frank Jordan, Vice President
Attachment (below): Working Paper : Boston's Planning Needs
Boston's Planning Needs
Boston is the only major American city that has no planning body independent of its redevelopment agency. Boston did have a Planning Board from 1914 to 1957, charged by the State enabling legislation to "...make careful studies of the resources, possibilities and needs of the city, particularly with respect to conditions which may be injurious to the public health . . . and to make plans for the development of the municipality with special reference to the proper housing of its people." As described by a 1940 Federal Housing Administration advisory memo, "The principal objective of the Board is to work out and to keep up to date for use in the affairs of Boston a comprehensive conception of the City, its responsible agencies, and its property, public and private, as an efficient machine for the living of its citizens." In 1957, the Boston Redevelopment Authority absorbed that Planning Board, and centralized implementation power for urban renewal.
For over four decades, planning has been subordinated to redevelopment. The Planning Board had two critical missions: to look at the city pro-actively and comprehensively, and to focus on residential life. The purpose of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, however, was narrower: to promote economic development by attracting capital investment into the city. The redevelopment arm, empowered for decades by Federal urban renewal funding and later by its land holdings and political powers, has dominated the evolution of the city.
Conflict of Interest
The BRA, as both planner and developer, has a built-in conflict of interest. As an advocate for development, and as a real estate developer that sells and leases property and seizes property by eminent domain, the BRA has a conflict of interest when it claims the role of a comprehensive planning entity. This is why other cities separate their planning and development functions into different agencies. Under the BRA, Boston's comprehensive planning has become a series of development projects, with little vision of the city as a whole.
As a result of this conflict, real citizen participation has been reduced and restricted. Residents have very little impact upon project reviews, and their participation is constrained by and subordinated to the BRA's development agendas. This has created an adversarial relationship between citizens and city officials that hampers even good development.
The current BRA can never be a disinterested planning agency. Good development decisions must be made from a comprehensive and long-term point of view. A redevelopment authority, even with a planning and zoning office , is not constituted to do this. This conflict in mission exists regardless of funding and staffing levels; the problem is not in competence, but in mandate.
The Impacts
The BRA's urban renewal aims have overridden the goals of comprehensive, resident-oriented planning, and the impacts on the "livable community" are evident. Commercial development has far outstripped housing development, which is now in critically short supply. Responsibility for the city's open space is being left to private business interests, whose economic agendas sometimes have adverse consequences for the environmental and civic quality of the public realm. Transportation planning has focused primarily on accommodating the increasing influx of automobiles, a strategy that has proven in other cities to be unsustainable.
Community groups are alarmed at the effects of limited and poor planning, and are reacting to fill the void. Business, civic, professional, environmental, and neighborhood groups are taking on planning in areas of concern, hoping to influence the City and the BRA. Although citizen involvement is desirable, the efforts of ad hoc special interest groups are no substitute for comprehensive planning.
Some BRA staff argue that combining the planning and development agencies increases efficiency, because if separate, two agencies might interfere with each other. If being "efficient" only means "expediting development," then that may be true. However, democratic government needs checks and balances to fairly represent all interests. Sacrificing this check and allowing the BRA free reign may speed development, but it diminis hes due process.
An Opportunity for Leadership
Urban renewal plans are expiring, the BRA structure is under review, and state and federal initiatives are encouraging municipal and regional planning. We have a unique window of opportunity to reassess and redefine how planning will occur for the 21st century.
There are six key questions:
- What is the purpose of planning in Boston today, and what should the structure, process, and product be?
- How can the planning process be made more broadly accountable?
- How should neighborhood, city-wide, and regional interests be balanced?
- How can planning be kept politically independent and still powerful enough to be effective?
- What is the new role, if any, for a redevelopment authority?
- What are the proper planning roles for the Department of Neighborhood Development, the City Council, and other government entities?
Recommendations
We need a revised structure to broaden accountability, and a revised process to create a substantive framework of community-based planning objectives and principles. To be effective, any new planning entity must have five components:
- professional, disinterested planning expertise
- effective control over development
- accountability to a wide range of constituents
- a mandate for comprehensive, long-term guidance of city evolution
- an open, inclusive process that educates the public and engages citizens in responsible decision-making
The city needs a public conversation about planning that includes City and State officials, legal and academic experts, residents, business, and institutions, working together toward a planning process that is environmentally sustainable and socially just.