Most of us in the pro-development pool think that community groups have too much power but I think that is a very one sided view. Why is it that these people think they need to get together in the first place? I think that it is because they see the city fighting against them and they feel threatened. If we could have a system where all three parties, the city, the developers, and the citizens, had equal say in development then I think we might be better off; a checks and balances system if you will.

Obviously the role of the government is to speak and fight for the citizens but as we all know this many times isn’t the case.

The BRA used to work along the top-down approach. They were the educated elite and their new plans for the city would fix all its problems. As time has proved over and over this is the wrong way to do things. We need a bottom up approach. But can a massive bureaucracy work bottom-up? I think it can and it has to if we are going to seriously start fixing the problems of the city.

I firmly believe that a city is only as strong as it’s weakest neighborhood. Sure New York has Midtown, the Upper East Side, and Park Slope, but it also has the South Bronx, Bed-Sty, and East New York. I think it is an Utopian dream to think that a city will never have slums or ghettos; I believe that they are inevitable. But what I don’t think is inevitable is that they have to be places where people are beaten down, places that are broken with broken people begetting more generations of broken people. I think that we need to see neighborhoods as not just real estate but as functioning organisms, much like the organs of a body. If you had healthy lungs but a dieing liver, sure you could breath but you would still be dieing. I think low income neighborhoods should be places where the weakest in society can go and survive, and where they can even bring themselves up and eventually move out. This was the vision of Jane Jacobs and I think that it is a noble and attainable one.

What I think the BRA needs to be is the agent that regulates the neighborhoods of Boston to make sure each is working correctly. You might think that most neighborhoods won’t need much help but just look at how much stink the Back Bay or Beacon Hill makes when a new building is proposed. The BRA needs to have representatives in every neighborhood that are on the ground and can talk to community groups, and so that community groups and citizens know who they are (perhaps they are elected?) so that people don’t have to feel so powerless. The fact that there are so many community groups in Boston should be a good thing, it should show that the people there actually care about the future of their communities, that they want them to be better places with good transportation, good schools, and safe streets. If developers had no walls against them then Boston would look like Houston.