In a long-awaited move to break up Boston’s independent planning and economic development arm, Mayor Michelle Wu filed an order Monday asking the City Council to formally begin deconstructing the agency. It’s an initial step in a major reform process that will move at the pace of city and state bureaucracy.
The order — a home-rule petition that would need City Council, state legislative and gubernatorial approval — would bring a new Boston Planning and Development Agency under city oversight. It would also strengthen public participation requirements and embed principles of affordability, climate resiliency and equity into development processes, Wu said in a letter sent along with the order.
“It is our administration’s answer to finally, once and for all, move away from Boston’s complex Urban Renewal past while providing us with the tools and powers necessary to improve and modernize comprehensive, city-wide planning and community development,” the mayor said.
A separate measure sent to the City Council Monday would also phase out powers granted under Urban Renewal, a set of development rules that cleared the way for city seizure and redevelopment of so-called blighted areas. The program is infamously known in Boston as the tool that enabled the destruction of the city’s West End neighborhood in the 1950s.
Each Urban Renewal plan dictates what can and cannot be built in an area. Currently, a dozen Urban Renewal plans are scheduled to expire in March. The administration is seeking to extend the provisions of these plans for two years, or until the home-rule petition is signed into law.
The Boston Redevelopment Authority, the BPDA’s legal name, was created in 1957 and has the legal power to “buy and sell property, acquire property through eminent domain and grant tax concession to encourage commercial and residential development,” according to the agency’s website. In 2016, former mayor, now U.S. Labor Secretary, Marty Walsh, attempted to shed the BRA's reputation for being unresponsive to community needs and overly accommodating to developers with a new name: the Boston Planning and Development Agency. Another economic development entity that was absorbed into the BRA in 1993 — the Economic Development and Industrial Corporation — would also be abolished under the order.
The newly structured BPDA would be led by the Chief of Planning, a new position established by Wu last year, and keep the current, five-member board structure. Excess revenue and property holdings would be transferred from the new agency to the city of Boston.
The BPDA employs about 200 workers. A city spokesman says no part of Wu’s order calls for downsizing agency staff.
The move represents one of the outstanding campaign plafom issues that vaulted Wu past a crowded field to victory in the 2021 mayoral race.
Wu signaled intention to kick off the process last week during her inaugural State of the City address and has already signed an executive order creating an interim planning council to help transition into the new agency.
Correction: An earlier version of this story referenced an old version of the mayor’s proposal.
