Hidden Link

February 12, 2024

By JENNIFER SMITH 

Since her days as a city councilor – and a 76-page white paper she put out in 2019 – Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has called for abolishing the city’s planning agency as it was constituted. The Boston Redevelopment Agency and its successor Boston Planning and Development Agency, a quasi-independent city agency, have long been ripped as too removed from democratic oversight and for prioritizing development over planning. 

Now gears are in motion for the mayor’s showpiece campaign promise – with a new ordinance filed that would move BPDA operations largely into a city planning department. 

The BPDA “really represented a specific way of governing development in Boston. That is, I think, really more what people are trying to abolish,” planning chief and BPDA director Arthur Jemison said on The Codcast. The way the agency was empowered, he said, “created one of the most powerful development agencies in the country, but what it has not done is allowed there to be regular democratic oversight of the agency and its staff.”

In classic Massachusetts fashion, restructuring the city agency is far from straightforward. Wu testified before the state Legislature in late January on behalf of a home rule petition that would let her dismantle and then recreate the agency under central city government control, retaining the urban renewal powers of the current BPDA. 

Separately, the mayor filed an ordinance with the City Council that would create a new Boston Planning Department, into which BPDA development review and planning staff will move.

Jemison didn’t comment on the legislative process, which requires sign-off from state lawmakers across Massachusetts to reform many aspects of city policy. He diplomatically offered “only great things to say” about the gubernatorial administration, particularly Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll and Housing Secretary Ed Augustus. The Healey administration’s housing bond bill includes initiatives that would assist with office-to-residential conversions, Jemison noted, aligning with a Boston pilot announced last year. 

In significant ways, the new BPDA board and the new planning department will look more like continuations or reframings than drastic overhauls. Urban renewal powers could be used to address resiliency, affordability, and racial equity concerns, rather than blight and urban decay. Wu zoning reform builds on the Walsh-era “Imagine Boston 2030” plans through a new “Squares and Streets” initiative, adding categories to the city’s zoning code through a community planning process.

“The mayor ran on abolishing the BPDA,” Jemison said, “but a couple things that I don't think she ran on were ending development or not having a planning and development function in city government.”

Jemison said the city will take the groundwork laid by Imagine Boston, which highlighted areas of the city that were ripe for new growth, “to the next stage.” The new process, which does not directly address prior rezoning efforts, aims to smooth development by offering predictable and definitive zoning updates.

“That's a much more challenging assignment, but it builds on the great work that I think was done before and takes it to another level,” Jemison said. “Hopefully a better one.”

Getting community buy-in involves a delicate balance of accommodating current residents, many of whom spent years on local rezoning efforts now in limbo with the administration changeover, and planning for new Bostonians. The pandemic Zoom era expanded the way cities think about reaching community, Jemison said, beyond a 6:30 p.m. meeting at a local junior high school.

Jemison pointed to residents who need to care for children and senior family members, people working long hours who can’t make it out to another meeting, renters who may not feel included by the process, and people who need additional translation services to participate in neighborhood planning. 

“It's almost like the method of gaining information about a community's views has become so ritualized, in a particular way that invites certain voices,” he said, especially homeowners and long-time residents. “We have to keep doing that, but we have to bring in other voices too."