Yesterday afternoon, I had the great honor of being unanimously re-elected President of the Boston City Council. I'm thrilled that my colleagues have given me another year to develop innovative ways we can make Boston a world-class city.
In my remarks, I laid out three things we can do to make Boston the greatest city in America. We must continue to look at other educational models in other cities to find new best practices for the Boston Public Schools. In the coming months, my colleagues and I will be visiting innovative schools, from Harlem’s Children’s Zone to those that have succeeded in Massachusetts.
Last month, the Council held a hearing on the possibility of term limits, both on the Mayor and City Council members. Bostonians emailed their councilors and came out to the hearing in droves, and as the process continued, it became clear we needed to have a much larger discussion on how our local government works. Councilor John Tobin will lead a Special Committee on Charter Reform, to examine ways our charter can evolve.
We will convene a panel of our area's best thinkers—from science to arts and every field in between—to advise us on what we must to compete with cities from New York to Bangalore. This committee will be led by Harvard University's Ed Glaeser, who wrote an open letter to the Council with his initial recommendations.
But we need to hear from people outside the academic world as well. I know that Blue Mass Group readers follow politics and policy very closely. Please leave your thoughts or ideas on how we can make Boston a great place to live in the comments, or feel free to call me or email me anytime. I look forward to hearing from you!
I would like to see the group that is going to review the Charter made up of more than simply City Hall insiders and people who regularly do business with the city and have an interest in keeping the powers that be happy.
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p>For example, when I was reviewing the issue of the police staffing levels, I was confronted with this absurd power of the mayor to simply ignore a vote (even a unanimous vote) of the city council, without having to respond, or go through the veto process if any argument can be made (no matter how flimsy) that the action of the council in anyway interferes with the power of the Mayor. This is no different than the signing statement scandal at the national level and gives the Mayor a power denied to POTUS.
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p>This part of the Charter should be clarified so that when the City Council votes on something, the Mayor can either sign it, veto it, pocket veto it, or challenge it in court. This notion that Mayor can simply ignore whatever he feels like without the veto process is absurd.
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p>The police staffing levels is not the only abuse of this, “I will not even dignify this with a response” power. The City Ordinances are littered with rules and regulations that are routinely ignored, and there is no index anywhere to say what City Ordinances are valid, which ones are ignored, and which ones are deemed irrelevant. As such, the City Ordinances are littered with worthless information that no one knows which are valid and which are not.
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p>Transparency on the City Ordinances for these oddballs would be helpful as well.
like parking meter revenue and tickets. Dump it directly into improving quality of life for Bostonians. More street trees. Bury more telephone poles. Improve the quality of the sidewalks. More bike lanes. More green space, well maintained and usable. Safer crosswalks. Work with the MBTA to install priority green signals for the C and E lines so that 150 people using mass transit don’t wait at a red light for 4 people in 3 automobiles to make left turns. More Big Belly machines to reduce wind-strewn litter and rodent problems while also cutting the city costs to service those barrels.
…except regarding parking revenue. I’ve never liked the idea of paid street parking. We drive on them without tolls; we should be able to park on them without paying. I like even less raising on-budget revenue from tickets. Anything collected from tickets should not be budgeted, but put in a rainy-day fund. In a free society budgets should not be balanced on the assumption that a certain amount of people will break the law a certain amount of time. This to easily leads to the concept of ticket quotas and other pressure on authorities to write as many tickets as they think they can get away with. A news report in DC recently said up to 50% of appealed tickets get thrown out, which can’t be very efficient.
Parking is a limited resource, permitting and meters ensure it will be used by people who are more likely to benefit the local community, namely residents and people who are coming there to spend money. Furthermore, not budgeting for revenue from parking tickets would be stupid. It’s as a predictable source of income as tax collections are. You might not like that, but it’s a fact. I do think though that when setting fee structures it should be based on what will maximize the benefit gained from the parking system, not what will maximize city revenue.
you need parking meters, but I don’t think that trying to jack up fees is actually going to make anyone from outside of the city want to head into Boston to shop. Reality is that there are fewer and fewer “unique” shopping experiences that can only be found in Boston (reality is that you can go to pretty much any suburban mall and find the same stores). I’m sure that the ring malls around 128 would be more than in favor of making downtown Boston an even more hostile place to do business (and we won’t even get into the Nashua/Salem side of the equation).
Vacancy rates should be at about 12% — meaning that there’s one open space every 8 spaces. This way people can find a parking space quickly, without cruising.
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p>To get there, you’ve got to price parking high enough, and enforce the meters. Parking is priced because if it weren’t, you’d never get a space. Correctly pricing parking is the best thing for the businesses because it eliminates the “I can never find a space” excuse, as well as reduces local traffic somewhat because people aren’t driving around the block three times to find a space as often.
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p>The other part of it — they’re Boston’s roads. They’re Boston’s parking spaces. Valuable land. Lots of Bostonians would be perfectly happy for the spaces to be ripped out entirely and replaced by trees… they’re not the ones driving to those stores. Why shouldn’t Bostonians maximize value from their resource? Why should they be giving it for free to suburbanites who congest their streets?
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p>As for moving violation tickets — every time somebody commits a moving violation in Boston, they put somebody else in danger, often a pedestrian. By enforcing the moving violation laws strictly, Boston can ensure that the city is even more livable for those who walk, use mass transit, or cycle. That much of the revenue will come from outside the city borders is a happy coincidence.
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p>P.S. This nonsense of free Saturday parking between Thanksgiving and Christmas is just that, nonsense. Parking meters exist to ensure that spaces are available. As multimeter spaces get rolled out, it becomes incredibly cheap and easy to adjust the price on a Saturday if the M-F price is too high (or low) to get the ideal vacancy rate. One thing I do know: a price of $0.00 on Newbury Street is too low on a Saturday — the end result is that nobody can find parking, and the businesses suffer as a result.
You can raise the price as much as you want, and perhaps that will free up some spaces, but it will also deter people from driving into the city and shopping here. That defeats the purpose. If you make it too expensive to park downtown, then only rich suburbanites will ever drive there.
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p>If there is not enough parking, the solution is obviously to create more parking garages, restrict new parking-hungry development, and improve public transit to make it a more attractive alternative.
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p>I think an ideal long-term solution for the downtown area would be large, affordable parking lots near the highways and convenient and cheap (perhaps free) bus service to get you around downtown.
Right, let’s pave large areas around downtown, encourage more car traffic in and out, and clog up the streets that remain up with buses. Sounds like a suburbanite’s dream — turning the city center into the Framingham mall.
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p>Whether or not it’s easy to drive into downtown Boston is not a significant factor in what makes the city work well.
Who said anything about “paving large areas around downtown”? Preferably, garages should be directly connected to the Mass Pike and expressways via ramps to discourage visitors from driving on city streets.
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p>I agree people should take the T, but you have to recognize that includes buses too. And what makes you think that buses are going to “clog up the streets”? Do you know any city where the streets are clogged with public transit buses? And so what if they are? If you are going to push for people using the T instead of driving, who cares if the streets are full of buses?
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p>You are totally right that downtown parking and traffic issues are only a small component of making the city “work well”, but that is the tiny part that this particular thread is engaged in.
Buses are an important part of mass transit, but downtown is incredibly well served by subway trains and existing buses. An unnecessary increase would add to pollution and congestion.
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p>If all that’s needed is some extra capacity in the garages at Alewife and Braintree, etc., then let the city work with the T and those towns to make it happen. And along with that it should be expensive to drive into town, to maximize city revenues and for effective rationing.
I’ll throw in one anecdote: remember working on a pension case a few years ago with a multiemployer union plan where we all met at the lawyer’s office (big firm downtown). After all of us gathered (and figured out the through the roof parking fees we all paid for 2 hours of meeting) that Boston is a “mutually inconvenient” place to meet. No wonder that another VC client figured out that being headquartered downtown when all of your clients are out on 128 or 495 isn’t exactly the smartest thing to do. Getting jobbed for 20-30 bucks during the work week for 2 hours gets really old.
If 10 people in a room insist on driving 10 autos into Boston on the workweek and can find another place to meet (north? south? west? of the city) than so be it.
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p>The only way to make Boston available for 10 people to drive 10 cars to a meeting is to make it like Charlotte or Atlanta. We don’t want a city like that, so thems are the breaks as they say.
Ensure that elevators and escalators work and are reliable, so those with strollers, wheelchairs, and canes can get in and out of Boston – and to and from the different parts of Boston like hospitals, realiably.
but I would remind folks that paratransit and accessibility work to stations have absolutely gobbled up a huge amount of operations and capital expenses in the last five or ten years.
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p>I’m not arguing that it shouldn’t be done; merely that the MBTA is putting a huge amount of resources there and deserves credit for doing so.
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p>Personally, I think that the MBTA should be stingier with paratransit since they (a) exceed the fed’s requirement on distance from a station, and (b) they continue serving some customers even after their entire route becomes handicap accessible for their disability. Remember, paratransit is essentially a super-expensive taxi cab service. In my opinion, it ought to come off of the MBTA books and onto the state budget directly.
I do not even know what it is – and I suspect that there are some Boston residents who would require this whether or not there are elevators, but for most of us, with arthritis, hip replacements, knee replacements, canes, walkers, etc. it is keeping the elevators working [and installing them] and the escalators safe and in good order that are critical to quality of life, and whether we shop or use restaurants or go to shows in Boston.
Although I would point out that the MBTA (and the public at large) will never recover the expenses of accessibility with the tax revenue from “whether we shop or use restaurants or go to shows in Boston.” That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it — we should do it because it’s the right thing to do, tax or business revenue be damned.
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p>I just wanted to point out that the MBTA deserves lots of credit for pushing through a large number of accessibility projects over the past five or more years, despite their terrible financial standing.
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p>P.S. Paratransit is essentially a taxi service for the disabled, and in the case of the MBTA it’s generally door-to-door service, although it does sometimes require advanced scheduling. I believe it requires a doctor’s note.
spoken like a suburbanite.
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p>Do you live in Boston? Serious question. The fact is, old American cities are successful because they choke out autos. It’s true that if you raise prices only rich suburbanites can afford to park — but so what? From Boston’s perspective, what’s better:
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p>Scenario A: low city revenue, people trolling around for spaces, and a mix of shoppers from the suburbs spending their money
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p>Scenario B: higher city revenue, people able to find spaces, and richer shoppers — who will spend more money on restaurants (local tax) and keep more stores in business because they’ll spend more money per shopping hour than the poorer ones.
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p>Methinks that Scenario B is better for Boston. Naturally, this is coupled with having great public transit, which Boston can’t implement directly, but can work with the MBTA to ensure that the trolleys and buses get the best treatment possible by the roads, ie strict enforcement of no parking in bus stops, no blocking the trolley, bus exclusive lanes, etc.
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p>As for parking lots — there’s already too much traffic in Boston. (Commuter/shopper) parking lots don’t do a damn thing to improve the quality of life for the residents of Boston — all they do is scar up the landscape, ensure that destinations Bostonians want are further away from each other, and drive up the price of land. More parking in Boston (downtown, shopping areas, other areas well served by the MBTA) is about the worst thing possible for the people who already live in Boston. Less traffic is preferred, and that’s accomplished by higher prices for parking, less pavement, more enforcement, better public transit, mixed use development, pleasant sidewalks, shorter crosswalks, more bike lanes, safe outdoor areas even at night, etc.
I do indeed live in Boston and have done so for more than 20 years, but I don’t live downtown – and indeed most Boston residents don’t either. I do have to commute through downtown via the T to get to my job in Cambridge, and do frequent downtown shops and services from time to time. My dentist is on Boylston St, I often visit the main branch of the library, I sometimes drive downtown to go to the theater or dine at a restaurant.
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p>I love the T, but the fact is that there isn’t even remotely enough parking near suburban T stops to service the existing demand, much less peak demand for big events.
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p>I agree that stupidly placed garages and parking lots don’t improve the quality of life, but I wasn’t suggesting any such thing. Strategically placed lots/garages near the major highways should not interfere with normal street traffic.
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p>As it stands now, any major event downtown results in thousands of out-of-towners attempting to navigate from the major arteries to various garages and lots. When I was still driving to and from work, I used to have to keep a Red Sox schedule in the car so that I would know to avoid a one-mile radius of Fenway on game days. Simply raising parking rates does absolutely nothing to fix that problem.
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I wrote that you wrote like one.
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p>Demand at what price :)? The solution is twofold: one, raise the price of parking at the T stop, and watch what happens. Some people will get a ride, some will walk to the station, some will carpool to the station. Some will drive downtown if the price gets too high, so it’s a balancing act. Two: build more parking out there.
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p>Well, for starters, that violates the standards for interstates (including the Mass Pike). It creates a huge problem for servicing the garage — emergency, but also regular building maintenance services. It also creates a situation where people in Boston get no benefit except for the property tax. They can’t use the garage, and the space the garage occupies can’t be used for anything a Bostonian wants, like shopping, housing, gov’t services, etc.
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p>Of course it does. As the price of parking goes up, fewer people do it, especially for entertainment situations like ball games. If Red Sox parking was $150 a game, you don’t think that more people would take the T or car pool? Of course they would. Want fewer people parking? Charge more. Want fewer people driving? Have fewer parking spaces. It really is that simple. This does come without a downside of course — if the MBTA isn’t capable of handling the traffic this does no good. Specifically for the Red Sox, the T does OK but not great*.
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p>Thousands of out-of-towners already take the T. If you make it easier/cheaper to take the T and/or make it harder/more expensive to drive, more will take the T. Boston can’t do much to make the T better due to jurisdiction, but they can make it harder/more expensive to drive.
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p> * once they start running three car sets on the D line it will get much better — and they’ll do it soon, since the stations are just about finished getting renovated to handle it.
…if street parking (except for permits) were banned entirely. It keeps roads clearer and traffic moving, and could encourage more public transit. To be clear, I’m more sympathetic to coming down hard on moving violations rather than parking violations for the safety reasons you mention. I just know in DC I’ve gotten my share of parking tickets, almost never justified and thus almost always kicked upon appeal (based on the mood of the examiner I’m convinced), which I blame on the city TRYING too hard to make money off of violations. That’s just a little too police statish for my tastes.
While Boston prides itself on being walkable, it is not completely safe in many neighborhoods. In redevelopment plans of major corridors (such as Mass. Ave.) all efforts should be put into encouraging better pedestrian and bicycle paths that don’t make walkers, bikers, motorists and bus drivers compete for the same piece of pavement all the time.
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p>A “Complete Streets” design promotes community, has been shown to improve local economies, promotes health and makes the city prettier, safer and better for all.
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p>Efforts like this should be improved in neighborhoods of Roxbury, Mattapan, Dorchester, not just the Back Bay & Beacon Hill.
However repackaged, we’re still talking about all the Richard Florida “creative class” drivel that totally destroys the civic fabric of neighborhoods.
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p>As luck would have it, the current issue of The American Prospect does a great takedown of this crap.
This is a less serious, quality of life thing, but it seems like an easy fix to make Boston more livable.
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p>Boston’s (and Massachusetts) permit process for things like food carts is completely outdated. The limitations are draconian. Even New York, with its sometimes violent food vendor confrontations for prime corner spots, does it much better.
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p>Liquor licenses are also a mess. Independent restaurants can’t open, survive, or offer reasonable prices if they have to compete for and then pay a couple hundred thousand dollars for a liquor license.
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p>Take a visit to Portland, Oregon and see what they are able to do with less stringent liquor and food laws.
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p>And what about a permanent public market? Possibly in the style, though less precious than San Francisco’s Ferry Building.
Nothing can be done by the City about liquor licensing until the State gives back control of the process. There is no legitmate reason for Boston to be the only town in the Commonwealth that cannot control its own liquor licensing.
Mike, if you haven’t seen it already, check out Boston Rising. It’s a great idea that’s just getting off the ground.
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p>www.bostonrising.org
I agree. Thanks for throwing its name into this post!
I would like to see some pushback from City Hall against the neighborhood civic groups that block high-density and mixed-use development and demand big swaths of space be given over to parking. The pendulum has swung too far in favor of these groups, who are not democratic and are dominated by older, more affluent, car-bound homeowners with NIMBY attitudes and no understanding of what makes good city neighborhoods work. I doubt it will happen though, because they also form the strongest nodes in most city councillors’ home bases.
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p>And I agree with the above commenter that Glaeser is a poor choice to lead this effort. He is one of those analysts who fundamentally accepts certain anti-urban aspects of the status quo, like car-centric development and service-economy inequality, to be natural and inevitable.
When is enough going to satisfy you on density? When the entire city looks like Downtown Crossing or the North End? When the entire city looks like the Bronx, or Manhattan, or Toyko, or when the entire city looks like the nightmare in Bladerunner.
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p>The only thing the civic groups are fighting for is that the Zoning Code, as written, actually means something and is not tossed out the window to satify some backroom deal or bribe.
No, not high-rise density (at least not in the neighborhoods), but the kind of density that made the neighborhoods what they are: you know, the kind of three-decker, row-house, and village commerce that the zoning code now makes all but impossible. So yes, more North End, less gray semi-suburb with frighteningly deserted streets. Open space for the sake of open space just kills city neighborhoods.
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p>As for the zoning code: The structures that make the most sought-after neighborhoods so wonderful are now illegal to build. And the civic groups are more likely to BE the dealmakers than they are the little guys on the outside. In my nbrhd the review process ended up blocking retail in a condo building at 944 Dorchester Ave. Think about that: no retail on the first floor of a busy commercial corner of Dorchester Ave. steps from the T. Instead just a blank brick front, and a worse financial situation for the condos, making it more likely to end up an albatross development.
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p>The problem is that people with narrow concerns tend to dominate civic groups that supposedly speak for much more complex areas.
Not all open space is the same.
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p>Side lots? Not very useful except for automobiles. Slight building setbacks? Great to allow more natural light, and not to feel like one is in a valley. Also allows for landscaping, helping to soften the feel of the neighborhood.
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p>Density could mean a series of 10 story buildings with ample sidelots and backlots — which results in a terrible neighborhood out of scale with humans or walking… or the same density can be accomplished like Boston did 100 years ago — row housing 3 stories high with no side lots. The advantage is that first floor can be retail, even if only on the corners of the blocks. The result is a livable community where a gallon of milk, dry cleaning, Chinese food, and a tavern are all a block away — as is mass transit.
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p>And really, Downtown Crossing? It’s a block from the Common. That’s like complaining about the density on 5th or 8th Ave between 59th and 110th in NYC. Sure, the buildings are tall — but that’s an awful lot of useful green space across the street.
A friend of mine in Bay Village describes the nightmare of empty nesters moving into the neighborhood and systematically trying to remove everything that makes urban living worthwhle. Bars? Noisy and draw undesirables. Convenience stores? Hangouts for hoodlums. Restaurants? Nice to have nearby, but only if they close early. Stores? Too much traffic.
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p>As he says, he can no longer buy smokes or get a drink in his own neighborhood. Why bother?
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p>I much prefer my area of Cambridge – stores on the first floor with residences above on the main streets, plus lots of two and family housing on the surrounding streets. And a park or three.
A city like Boston, largely dependent on property taxes, and with much of its area tax-exempt must have a certain amount of density just to finance itself. Add affordable housing considerations, and the minimum necessary density goes up.
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p>One of the major mistakes made by the current Administration (and permitted by the Council) was the use of suburban land use policies in a geographically small city. These policies (exacerbated by the end of rent control, condominium conversion run amok, and the pathetically small payments-in-lieu-of-takes paid on exempt institutional property) wrecked working-class neighborhoods citywide.
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p>Insofar as the Council under a strong Mayor is concerned:
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p>Under the Charter the Council cannot increase the budget, but it can make cuts. Perhaps a little hardball vis-a-vis the gentleman on the other side of the fifth floor is in order…?
The city council approved or disapproved the budget. They have no power to cut the budget. This was a major issue 2 years ago when several councilors wanted more street walkers, and there only option was to vote the entire budget down.
I’m pretty sure this isn’t what you mean in this context, but I know that term as a euphamism for “prostitute”. Do you by any chance mean police officers on foot, which I might term “beat walkers”? Please clarify.
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p>I don’t understand why the Council doesn’t have the power to amend the budget the way the General Court or Congress would.
Sorry. I was talking about people from groups like City Year who go out and try to get people off the street, off drugs and off crime.
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p>I made a similar mistake once, refering to a house where a lady had dozens of cats, as a “cathouse”.
City Year is mostly a school-based program and community improvement- such as building and repairing parks, community centers, etc.
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p>Street Workers are often actually hired by the city and with funding from places like the Boston Foundation. Programs like StreetSafe Boston might be more what you are thinking.
I should have said “hold up the budget”, which the Council used to have no problem doing, both to maintain institutional respect and protect constituents.
The Council absolutely can use its power to cut the budget, as defined by MGL Chap 44, Sec 32 “
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p>I like Paul’s original suggestion.
Boston, specifically its city government, is its own worst enemy when it comes to keeping Boston successful and a great place to live. It’s damn lucky to be surrounded by the likes of Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline, and a bunch of other cities and towns that don’t share Boston’s stuck-in-the-50s-70s rigidness and blindness to its own success. Boston repeatedly does its best to sabotage everything that makes it great, but doesn’t quite manage to.
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p>A great place to live, and a successful city, needs to be on that people want to move to. It especially needs to be a diverse place that many different kinds of people, and especially creative, entrepeneurial, artistic, skilled, educated, energetic, and risk-taking people want to move to. People who are going to do things, shake things up, make things interesting, and make connections.
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p>We’ve got some great advantages Boston can’t easily destroy, like the world’s best collection of top-tier colleges and universities. We’ve got some huge obstacles Boston can’t do that much about, like America’s insane anti-immigration efforts (immigrants, particular from poor countries, are often bold and energetic and driven, and foreign students are a huge part of the reason that our universities are so great).
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p>However, there’s a lot of ways Boston can get in its own way, and it hardly ever misses an opportunity. Before it focuses on moving forward, Boston needs to begin by figuring out how to stop tripping itself up. Sometimes with state agencies as its allies.
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p>Number one, stop persecuting weirdness! Shutting down highways because little cartoon figures got hung under them, and then trying to make an example of the people who put them there, is world-class idiocy. Massport freaking out over an MIT girl who had circuit board art on her shirt, the high profile arrest of Shepard Fairey, and plenty of other little things, combine to give Boston a well-deserved reputation as a place where people put themselves at risk by failing to be normal and uninteresting. It certainly makes many people think twice about doing things. I wonder if Sidewalk Sam would be treated as a terrorist if he were starting out today. Cut this stuff out ASAP!
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p>At least try to do something about the immigration problem, by asking our congressional delegation to challenge the stupidity at a federal level, and using Boston’s position as one of the top US cities to make a high profile public appeal to the country that this stuff is hurting us badly – if we want to remain the science, tech, cultural, and economic leaders of the world, we have to start welcoming foreigners again.
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p>We have a mayor who seems to think 18+ venues for music and dancing are a danger, a liability, something to be barely tolerated and stamped out at the least provocation. Vote that guy out already. In the meantime, challenge his destructive policies and allow youth community and youth culture, even if it’s not always quiet and comfortable.
Whether it’s the brilliant Alice Wolf or the recently resigned State Senator from Cambridge.
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p>Whether it’s our great Congressman from Somerville or the public official who stole from vending machines.
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p>Whether it’s solid leadership from Frank Smizik or the conservatives that want to boot Jesse Mermell off the Board of Selectmen in Brookline (free plug, Jess!)
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p>Point is, we all have shining stars and bete noirs – 🙂
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p>And maybe those communities can learn a bit from us — in terms of addressing issues of affordable housing and homelessness, as Boston continues to do the heavy lifting for our state and region;
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p>Or our system of “pilot” schools, such as the Boston Arts Academy and the Edward M. Kennedy Health Careers Academy, which formed the basis for the state’s Horace Mann Schools;
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p>Or our Office of New Bostonians, which welcomes newcomers and provides them with links to services and community;
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p>Or the Boston One In Three Initiative, which seeks to involve younger Bostonians (22-35) in their neighborhoods and in city policy.
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p>But the election is over and the time for “revisiting ‘old nos” is here, as the Mayor said the other day, so why not put forward some positive ideas, as both he and Council President Ross are seeking. This is the Administration that started an array of programs from the citywide Main Streets Initiative to the Boston 2:00 to 6:00 after school inititative; Boston Bounty Bucks, which puts fresh food on inner city family tables, “Technology Goes Home”, to train city families in technology and provide them with their own computer and much more.
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p>We have new faces at City Hall, on both sides of the Fifth Floor, as our city continues to change, so let’s look forward, not back, accept the challenges put forward by our public leaders and make the city we love (and the communities around us) even better.
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p>Happy New Year!
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What relevance is there to the existence of good and bad elected officials, mostly serving at the state level, that come from various towns? Did you deliberately not want to understand what I wrote? Well, at least you commented in good humor.
Ah, Cos, merely standing up for my community and its leaders. I probably should have commented also on the recent Sunday piece by Peter Canellos, blaming James Michael Curley and his heirs for his perceived ills of Boston, and he’s probably not totally wrong, just mostly.
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p>Fact is, I like my city, I like our vitality, our diversity, our neighborhoods, and a lot more. I like the chamges that have occurred over the years – when I was growing up, there were neighborhoods you just didn’t visit, now, most, if not all, of the barriers are down. When I was growing up, I pondered whether to accept a diploma from a racist School Committee member whose son was kicked out of my junior high school for similar epithets. That wouldn’t happen today.
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p>Cities are always a work in progress. There’s always more to be done and mistakes sometimes get made, but they are correctable. So at the beginning of this new year, I hope we can all look forward with optimism and encouragement. We’ll all need it in the year to come.
It is nice to (finally?) see some real and bold leadership come out of the City Council. Though there are many well-intentioned people on the council, there has long seemed to be too much of a focus on petty issues. While day-to-day neighborhood complaints are an unavoidable and at times important part of the job, we need a council that looks at the broader picture. Councillor Ross’ remarks to the opening session of the council offer a glimmer of hope that this body might begin to take this part of the job seriously. And that they might begin to offer some true innovation and reform on issues that confound our leaders and hamper our city’s progress.
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p>It is also exciting to see the new leadership on the council of both Felix Arroyo and in particular Ayanna Pressley, whose campaign I paid some attention to and was often delighted by. I was already hopefully that their presence would spark a renewed conversation about the larger problems Boston faces. Perhaps they will be the catalyst that can help Councillor Ross take his good intentions and bold words beyond the inaugural speech to some real action. I am glad to see people already commenting here on BMG and offering ideas of how to make Boston better. Let’s continue to engage in this conversation and ensure that our leaders follow through.
Good post but please, think about trying to limit usage of terms like “American’s Best City” and the overused “world-class city.” It makes us sound like we’re also-rans trying to buck up our self-confidence. Let’s set our sights on being and staying an excellent city and we’ll do fine.
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p>Focus on two categories:
1) Nuts & bolts, i.e. city services, such as those that are the topic of most comments here. The stuff that urban mechanic mayors are best at.
2) Creative, future-thinking, surprising ideas that can inspire and energize us. Ideas that have a “wow factor.” We have too little of those in Boston.
One of the strangest things about Boston is the difficulty one faces when trying NOT to drink and drive. I live in Cambridge, but frequently go out near Government Center (I refuse to call it the ladder district). There’s not a lot of options for getting home:
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p>The T closes at 12:30, so unless one wants to cut out early, it is of no help.
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p>The T used to have a night owl service, but that’s long gone.
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p>That leaves one with to deal with our cab force, which is surprisingly meagre for a city of Boston’s size.
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p>1) Boston cabs don’t use “for hire” signs, leaving one to guess whether they’re available.
2) Competition is fierce. There are always more people than cabs at that hour.
3) Boston cabs have limited knowledge of Cambridge and will frequently refuse to go there (yes, I know it’s illegal – try calling and complaining).
4) Cambridge and Somerville cabs can’t pick up in Boston. It’s confusing even to the folks that live here.
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p>Working “for hire” signs seems pretty basic. I still don’t understand why Cambridge cabs can’t pick up in Boston (I’m guessing it has to do with Logan), but a metropolitan fleet would go a long way to fixing 2, 3, and 4. Some sort of city knowledge test, ala London, would help with 3 (the cabs don’t know Boston well, either).
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p>Having the T close at a reasonable hour would be my preferred solution, but they’re struggling as it is.
The system is so nonsensical and expensive.
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p>It probably doesn’t help that cab medallions are outrageously expensive and owned by a handful of cartels who have a tremendous amount of power in regards to laws and regulations surrounding that industry.
Just got this email:
City Council President Michael Ross:
Priorities for Boston: 2010 and Beyond
–Friday, January 8, 2010, 12:30pm – 2:00pm
–Jewish Alliance for Law & Social Action, 18 Tremont St., 3rd. Floor, (near Park St., State St. and Gov’t Ctr. T stations)
Admission is free and all are welcome.
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p>At this Brown Bag lunch event, open to all, Mike Ross will talk about his plans for the city as Council President and field your questions and suggestions. This is part of JALSA’s First Friday discussion series and we expect a very interesting and open discussion. Join Us!
I started this book during jury duty at Suffolk Superior Courthouse. It’s part of a preamble for today’s New Urbanist movement that champions mixed-use and that kind of thing. The basic thesis is that neighborhoods should be allowed to grow organically on a small scale, without master plans and overlords in city hall. I like it.
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p>I took a walk outside the courthouse for lunch and was struck by the three generations of city building in that little square: the magnificent John Adams courthouse, the inevitably downscaled Art Deco Superior Court addition, and the modernist horror Center Plaza which arcs along Cambridge Street.
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p>If one has the courage to admit that government itself became bigger and more arrogant over this period, it becomes clear how the march to civic modernism was part of an effort to steamroll traditional aesthetic values and expectations, and that this matched a similar movement to invade and destroy Boston’s so-called NIMBY neighborhoods.
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p>If you take this comparison you will see how our public buildings steadily degraded in taste, materials, and concern for the human beings who would be using them. The question is, are we going lower or is it time to start moving up again? Will you be on the side of the residents, or will you be on the side of big-money outsiders who have brought us terrible blots like Center Plaza?
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p>PS post on Universal Hub too if you want to get real Bostonians talking to you.
This is actually one of a three-volume set written by Christopher Alexander in the late 1970s.
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p>More recently, he followed that up with “The Nature of Order”, a four-volume set that explores other implications of his “generative” approach to architecture (as well as life and art).
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p>The Seaport District wasteland is a marvelous opportunity to apply the principles that Christopher Alexander articulates so well. I’ve written him in hopes that he will feel the same — he may well have some ideas of how to proceed (he’s done such things many times).
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p>I’m hoping that perhaps we can find a way to harness some of the frustration we all feel and apply it in a creative and constructive way.
Exactly Tom. What would happen if the Seaport was simply broken into small lots and sold to people to build 1, 2, and 3-family homes on, and small retail businesses and offices to serve them sprung up…. isn’t this how our most valued neighborhoods developed? The planners will tell you that the triple decker is too expensive to model the future on. In fact the expense turned into wealth for the homeowners.
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p>The current plan for the Seaport is to turn it over to huge developers to build condos and high-rise hotels. This will generate legalized graft in the form of corrupt contributions and also backroom deals with the politicians who can tell the planners who to let in and who to exclude.
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p>The master plan model, therefore works primarily to generate wealth for the developers, construction companies and politicians while specifically excluding the middle-class lot-owner from wealth generating property. Unfortunately it is supported by much of the rhetoric and belief systems of progressive and liberal politics as seen above, especially in single issue movements, such as anti-NIMBY complaints, the artistic avant-garde, [star]chitects, world-class city boosters, high density, rail-o-philia, low-income housing.
In “The Nature of Order”, Christopher Alexander offers an even better approach that he’s used successfully to build several communities.
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p>The theme is to FIRST plan the “cityscape”. Attractive public spaces, like parks, sidewalks, meeting places, etc., are outdoor spaces that are defined by the structures who’s walls provide their boundaries.
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p>The CA approach is to design THOSE first, without regard to who owns the lots or what businesses are actually in the buildings. Then, using known and tested ratios and guidelines — for example, the ratio of pedestrian/vehicular area, or the ratio of open space/built-out space, that sort of thing — design the footpaths, streets, sidewalks, and so on that define the building lots.
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p>The sale of building lots to individual owners is done last, rather then first; individual lots don’t even exist until the public space has already taken shape (at least on paper and in renderings).
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p>By the time an individual lot is sold, the macroscopic decisions about the public-facing facades (height, setback, visual mass, window area, window placement, etc) are already done, so that the integrity and livability of the community is already assured.
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p>It’s a very radical idea, much along the lines of yours, yet it retains enough public guidance of the process to encourage a result that everybody can embrace.
Why have the City Stenographer record public meetings of Boston City Council yet not make readily available the Councilors’ debate?… Please make available on the web the words of City Councilors at the public meeting, the stenographic machine record that people can respond with feedback, comment, suggestions, questions.
Please make available online the Boston City Charter as it is now!
Please make available online diagrams of each floor at City Hall for locating city departments, offices, services… including a floor by floor directory listing that’s complete.
Please make available online the printed annual reports of city departments currectly printed by the city Graphic Arts Department.
Please make available online the Reports of Boston Finance Commission and the names of the people on the Commission. How ironical it is not to include Boston Finance Commission at http://cityofboston.gov
Please make available online the varied communications of Boston City Council instead of only sending these Council communications by email.
Please put on the Boston City Council website the FOI Freedom of Information public records policies and Sunshine open public meetings policies of open transparent government that the hundred or so Council staff adhere to when receiving enquiries for Council public information about public meetings.
Stop the resistant attitude toward people enquiring about Boston City Council actions, accomplishments, activities. Communications of Boston City Council have been in appearance designed to keep at too long an arms reach away people interested in following Council actions, accomplishments, activities.
Management and Information Systems Department rajesh.pareek at cityofboston.gov
Council Office ann.braga at cityofboston.gov
The Honorable Mike Ross michael.ross at cityofboston.gov
archives at cityofboston.gov
City Archivist john.mccolgan at cityofboston.gov
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p>A suggestion…
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p>Please post the following city document in online archives of City Council documents!… preferably formatted in HTML. It would allow researchers and anyone studying or interested in Boston City Council to review past communications, the public records of Boston City Council.
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p>On 1/22/10, Boston City Council citycouncil at listserv.cityofboston.gov wrote:
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p> Good Afternoon,
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p> Attached please find City Council Calendar for Week of January 25th.
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p> Happy New Year!
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p> Lorraine Schettino
Boston City Council Central Staff
One City Hall Square, 5th Floor
Boston, MA 02201
617-635-3040
lorraine.schettino at cityofboston.gov
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p> Jan27_10 Calendar.doc 76K Download [Document available by email]