Every city has its problems but it often comes as a surprise that even cities with large numbers of wealthy and well-educated citizens are far from perfect. Boston is a good example, as home to some of the best universities, hospitals and high culture arts in the country it would seem that the city could identify problems and both devise and implement solutions to them. This isn’t necessarily the case. While Boston has had some great projects which serve as models to other cities it doesn’t appear to have learned enough from its own successes.
In my book, Smart Communities, I take a look at the Boston Main Streets. The Main Street Model was created by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1980 to preserve and reinvigorate traditional or historic commercial areas. In 1995, Boston became the first in the nation to begin applying the Main Street model on a city-wide scale. Divided into 21 “downtowns” each participating Main Street in Boston receives city funding through four year grants and corporate contributions. As districts applied for participation in the program they were asked to identify their financial, physical and civic assets. These assets were then targeted for preservation and publicity, the result was an outpouring of support from community members who logged 97,153 volunteer hours between 1995 and 2001.
Even while Boston was instituting a smart approach to its downtown there were other problems brewing. One of the greatest issues facing Boston in the last decade was its overpriced housing which has forced people earning lower wages to reconsider their continued stay in the city. While civic groups recognize the importance of this issue some have argued that it is being ignored. Guest authors schooled in Boston’s urban issues wrote for the Boston Globe, “We cover US regions regularly; with the exception of the Greater Boston Chamber's city-to-city leadership trips, we never encountered an area so disinterested in learning about other regions’ best practices, either in economic development or civic-business partnerships.”
As Boston Main Streets demonstrated, civic involvement in these problems helps tremendously. No amount of money will fix Boston’s housing issues but civic engagement will and, as the Pew Partnership for Civic Change surveys have found, citizens are far more willing to donate their time and labor than give money to a civic group to solve their problem for them. Boston needs a solution that builds on its existing assets, its people, in order to gain greater investment in its future.
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