Briefing Paper:
Sustainable Development in the
Metropolitan Boston Region
August 1, 1997
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Prepared by: |
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OVERVIEW
Physical Description
The Metropolitan Boston region fronts on Massachusetts Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. The areas near the bay and ocean are low lying and rise to higher elevations and a gently rolling hilly terrain inland from the coast. The region shows the impact of the retreating glaciers with its rocky soil and scattered beautiful elongated hills, called drumlins. Perhaps the most notable of these drumlins is Bunker Hill, made famous during the Revolutionary War. The region is laced with a network of meandering rivers that flow to the harbor and the bay, providing recreational, economic, and ecological benefits.
Home to three million people, the metropolitan Boston area is spread over 1,422 square miles. Its central portions inside of Route 128 contain many densely settled neighborhoods interspersed with office towers, shopping centers and industrial parks. On the region's north shore and to the west are older urban communities that were formerly centers of maritime and mill industries. There are large expanses of protected open space and wetlands that thread through the outer suburbs and encircle Boston, preserving a high environmental quality. Within the urban core, a network of open space, including Olmsted's "Emerald Necklace" and the Boston Harbor Islands is integrated into the fabric of urban development.
Historical Development Patterns
The Boston region is one of the oldest in the nation. The first European settlers, the Pilgrims and then Puritans, arrived in the seventeenth century. Early settlements were coastal. As the economy matured and population increased, the settlers moved further inland. By the dawn of the industrial revolution in the early 19th Century, Boston had become the predominant urban area and economic center within New England, a position it still holds today.
The industrial revolution sowed the seeds of the first suburban sprawl. Seeking good water power for their mills and cheap labor, the first industrialists developed mill towns outside the previously urbanized area. These factory towns such as Marlborough, Peabody, Waltham and Woburn created new growth centers that competed with Boston. Development of the railroad and the trolley led to the creation of fairly compact suburbs that were linked to Boston or one of the more distant growth centers. Since Boston remained the economic center, the railroad network continued to focus on Boston as the center of the transportation network.
All of this began to change after World War II. In the 1950's, the federal and state governments began construction of the Interstate Highway network, which includes two circumferential highways. The first road to be completed was Route 128/I-95. Route 128 is roughly ten miles outside of downtown Boston. Its interchanges have become the location for major office and retail developments. The same is true for I-495, which is about thirty-five miles from downtown Boston.
Rapid residential surburbanization began in the 1950's and followed the pathways of good highway access and cheaper housing prices. The development pattern offers numerous anomalies:
Metropolitan Government Structures
Massachusetts has 351 cities and towns, and 101 are contained within the metropolitan Boston region. Mayors and City Councils govern the cities of Massachusetts, but towns are usually governed by groups of officials called Selectmen. Members of a Board of Selectmen are usually elected to 3-year terms, and town meetings, a proud "home rule" tradition from Colonial times, are still held regularly. Each municipality in the Commonwealth is an autonomous, full-service political unit, providing fire, police, educational, inspectional, zoning, and dozens of other services to its residents.
Several boards and authorities have been created during the past century to supply regional services (water and sewerage, parks, mass transit, harbor, and airport). These agencies operate not only within different geographic boundaries, but also independently of one another. The agency with the broadest geographical constituency is the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC), representing 101 cities and towns in greater Boston in the areas of transportation, economic development, housing, water resources, and others. As one of fourteen members of the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), MAPC has oversight responsibility for the region's federally funded transportation program. However, the "advisory only" nature of the Council hinders the development of a viable regional vision.
Counties in Massachusetts have no inherent powers and exercise only those conferred by the Legislature. Massachusetts had fourteen counties. The metropolitan Boston area is comprised of parts of six counties, only one of which, Suffolk is entirely within the regional boundary. Counties have historically acted as the administrative agents of the state, and each has been served by three county commissioners with the exception of Nantucket and Suffolk. The five town selectmen of Nantucket serve as commissioners; Suffolk's commissioners are the Mayor and City Council of Boston. In Massachusetts, the poor fiscal condition of some counties has led to action by the General Court to abolish their governmental and administrative functions. Legislation was recently enacted to abolish Middlesex, Hampden and Worcester Counties, transferring the county functions of registries, deeds, and jails to the state.
Economy
The unique resources and attributes that characterize this region have shaped the economic growth of the Boston metropolitan area. The region contains many universities, medical centers and research institutions combined with one of the most educated workforces in the United States. The mass of knowledge-based industries provides optimum conditions for the incubation of startup companies that bring technological and scientific discoveries to market.
Four key industries comprise the foundation of the Boston metropolitan economy: high technology, health services, financial services and higher education. One out of every four workers in the Boston area is employed in these sectors of the economy, and a similar number of jobs are provided by secondary industries (such as legal, accounting, transportation, printing, and business services) that are supported by these key sectors. (1)
Boston has evolved into one of the top centers for financial services in the world. Over one quarter of all U.S. mutual funds assets are managed here by such big names as Fidelity, Putnam and Scudder. In addition the area hosts some of the nation's largest banks, including Fleet Bank, Bank Boston and State Street.
Software developers have emerged as economic growth leaders in the region's new high-technology industry of the 1990's, largely replacing computer hardware manufacturers, the mainstay of the 1980's. According to the Massachusetts Software Council, there were 2,200 software companies in the Bay State in 1996 (most located in metropolitan Boston), up from 800 in 1989.
Much of the software activity has centered on Internet and related telecommunications products. The proliferation of Internet related companies has contributed to the current "boom" in the telecommunications industry. Between 1993 and 1996, Massachusetts employment in telecommunications increased by 61 percent. In fact, one out of every five new jobs created in Massachusetts during that period was in the telecommunications industry. (2)
A spin-off of the region's premier medical research facilities is the flourishing biotechnology sector. There are over 120 biotechnology companies in Massachusetts, most located in the Boston area. These companies employ 15,000 people and garner over $1.6 billion in revenues.
Ecology/Environmental Resources
The port city of Boston was built on the harbor, and this critical resource still provides ecological, recreational, and economic benefits to the region. After decades of neglect and pollution, the Boston Harbor Cleanup project began in the mid-1980's and has resulted in dramatic improvements in water quality, a reduction in beach closings, and a healthier marine ecosystem. The $4 billion investment in wastewater infrastructure is one of the largest of such projects in the nation, and the recent designation of the Boston Harbor Islands as a National Recreation Area is just one indication that a restored Boston Harbor offers significant public benefits to the metropolitan community.
The region's rivers and freshwater lakes are not faring as well as the harbor. Over two-thirds of the rivers fail to meet their water quality standards under the Clean Water Act, and 80 percent of the lakes are moderately to severely stressed by eutrophication. Massachusetts has launched an ambitious new "Watershed Initiative," which focuses state resources on a watershed basis and encourages the formation of partnerships among regional and local officials, citizen groups, and the private sector.
Land development patterns based on low-density "sprawl" have had a severe impact on the region's open space and wetlands resources. From 1950 to 1985, the region lost 40 percent of its open space. Likewise, over a third of the wetlands in the region have been lost to filling and development. Efforts are underway through the Metropolitan Greenspace Alliance to coordinate the efforts of many local open space organizations.
Air quality is a key issue particularly with respect to the transportation system. The Boston region is in non-attainment of the Clean Air Act's standard for ozone, primarily due to mobile sources. The region's Metropolitan Planning Organization is working actively to promote a more efficient sustainable transportation system, including planning for bicycle and pedestrian facilities, transportation demand management programs, the Clean Cities Program and Enhancement projects.
Societal Change
In the last 25 years, minority and foreign-born populations have increased dramatically in the Boston region. Living arrangements have been radically altered with a steep decline in the number of families with children, offset by a jump in the number of people living alone or in single parent families. High-paying manufacturing jobs usually open to those with a high school education have almost disappeared and have not been replaced. Married women have entered the paid work force in large numbers to bolster the economic security of families and to compensate for a dramatic rise in the real cost of living, especially in housing and education.
Class divisions are also deepening despite having the highest proportion of college graduates in the country. The prospects for a middle-class standard of living are severely limited without access to a college degree or vocational training. The cost of education is doubling every 15 years (adjusted for inflation). The region's many prestigious private universities, as well as public universities and community colleges, are among the most expensive to attend in the country. Job training programs are generally under funded with supporting resources scattered across many agencies.
THE SCAN
Defining Trends/Constraints and Barriers
Metropolitan regions are complex, physical environments where the activities of its residents are highly interrelated. Extensive intra-regional dependency means that successful problem solving must tackle all major weaknesses for effective change to occur. At a minimum, residence, work, travel, taxation, environmental protection and governance require involvement. Some of the key characteristics of the Boston metropolitan area are:
Concentrations of Poverty
Most of the poor live in a dozen urban communities. In these areas, employment opportunities are scarce, unemployment high, and wages low.
Absence of Livable Wage Jobs for High School Graduates
The manufacturing jobs that formerly offered a middle-class wage to high school graduates have disappeared. Wage rates have fallen sharply for low-skill workers and those without a college degree.
Labor Shortage
Concurrently, despite the high proportion of college graduates in the area, many industries are having difficulty filling positions for highly skilled labor, particularly the software industry. This prevents local companies from expanding in the district and discourages outside companies from relocating in the district.
High Costs
Economic development in the Boston area is constrained by high costs. According to a 1995 study by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, the Bay State ranks among the top ten states in costs for health care, electricity, manufacturing wages, unemployment insurance, and corporate income taxes. In addition, Massachusetts is ranked 19th in terms of costs for Worker's Compensation.(3) Moreover, while the district's per capita income is about 36 percent above the national average, current estimates indicate that the Boston area is more than 44 percent more expensive than other metropolitan areas. At over double the average, the cost of housing is especially out of line with the other areas of the country.
Dependence on the Property Tax
A property tax cap has forced local land development decisions to be based on revenue needs at the expense of environmental protection and prudent infrastructure investment. In locations where new development has not been attracted, the local capacity to provide for adequate schools, public safety and other services has declined.
Political Fragmentation
Overlapping water, sewer, electric, gas and transit services areas and land development decisions made in 101 cities and towns results in uncoordinated, lengthy, and cumbersome decision-making. Economic development can be delayed, increasing its expense and producing conflicting decisions.
Worsening Traffic Congestion and Air Pollution
Major highways are unable to move commuters and commercial vehicles quickly during rush hour. Urban sprawl is pushing people to commute from ever further distances. Existing public transit service is unable to meet the needs of an expanding number of suburb-to-suburb work trips. The increased traffic also leads to increased air pollution.
Rising Infrastructure Costs
Antiquated highway, transit, water and sewer systems and continued urban sprawl have pushed capital investment needs far above the ability of local and state government to finance.
Environmental Resource Management
The majority of the region's rivers and lakes are failing their water quality standards, often due to "non-point" sources of pollution such as stormwater runoff and septic systems. The region lost more than 40 percent of its open space to the development that occurred between 1950 and 1985. While the region's air quality has improved in the last decade, the metropolitan area is still in non-compliance with the Clean Air Act's standards for ozone.
Challenges, Opportunities and Goals
While it is clear that the region will usher in the new millennium facing complex challenges in economic, social, and environmental areas, it is important to emphasize the unique character and substantial assets of the metropolitan Boston community. A large pool of educated people, a current strong economy, and an enviable history and quality of life, are but a few of the variables upon which the regional can build future success. The magnitude of that success will be determined, in part, through the region's ability to identify problems and solutions in an atmosphere of enlightened consensus building which allows for the creation of long term opportunity. Some of the challenges and issues a regional agenda will need to address are as follows:
Building On Our Regional Identity
The Boston metropolitan area is extremely heterogeneous with distinct and small geographies. However, in spite of the numerous disparate political systems and a general resistance to the concept of a strong regional government, anecdotal evidence indicates the residents of the metropolitan area exhibit a strong regional identity. Those who are visiting other parts of the country will regularly indicate that they come from the Boston area when they are asked where their home is located. In general, there is a willingness to associate the suburbs with the central city, which is not the case in many other metropolitan areas. The people of the metropolitan communities embrace the city of Boston as the political, social and economic hub of the region. The challenge is to translate that concept into a working geography for metropolitan initiatives and regional problem solving.
A Civic Forum for Metropolitan Initiatives
The second major challenge is to establish a civic infrastructure that encourages the communities of the region to work toward common goals. As the county debate rages on, Mayor Menino's Commission on Regionalization has recently released it first paper on metropolitan cooperation. The Commission reviewed a variety of alternative structures and has recommended studying the formation of a council of governments to expand the metropolitan area's capacity for regional initiatives. MAPC, the designated regional planning agency for the 101 cities and towns in metropolitan Boston, is exploring ways in which it could serve a metropolitan council role, providing not only traditional planning services, but also regular intermunicipal service agreements and a framework for a broad policy forum.
Global Competitiveness
The third challenge is to insure that this region remains competitive in a global economy. Toward this end, it is essential that the Boston metropolitan area launch a regional initiative that brings all sectors to the table to set a metropolitan agenda for strategic economic development.
Greater Economic Opportunity
Over the last two decades, the Boston metropolitan region has been through a series of economic cycles that have created significant opportunities for certain segments of society to prosper. However, an increasing number of lower and middle class families are struggling to survive in this boom and bust and boom again economy. A regional agenda should formulate initiatives to address the issue of economic disparity, which fragments the metropolitan area.
Better Linkage between Land Use, Transportation and Other Infrastructure
One of the biggest challenges for metropolitan planners is to establish a cause and effect relationship between transportation infrastructure investment and land use around those infrastructure improvements. Recently, the local members of the Metropolitan Planning Organization adopted a significant caveat requiring that the Regional Transportation Plan be continually reviewed for opportunities to better coordinate transportation and land use.
Environmental Protection
The region's environmental resources are the foundation of its quality of life and prosperity. Protecting land, air and water resources is inherently a regional endeavor as these resources by nature extend beyond political and geographic boundaries:
Preliminary Strategies:
The Regionalization Commission Report
On June 27, 1997, the Regionalization Commission, sponsored by the City of Boston through Mayor Thomas Menino and funded by the Commonwealth, released a report calling for two major policy forums. The first is a broad-based economic forum that would bring together business, academic, government, and community leaders to review the Boston's region's economic strengths and weaknesses and formulate strategies to be developed and managed jointly among the public and private sectors.
The second proposal explores the formation of a metropolitan council comprised of the chief local elected officials. The council would convene to voluntarily explore mechanisms for intermunicipal cooperation on service delivery planning and policy development. Being modeled after similar efforts around the country, the council of governments would strengthen the opportunities for cooperation by providing a civic forum for cities and towns to develop new services and manage them on an ongoing basis through cooperative financing.
Concentrating Development
MAPC's regional growth plan, MetroPlan 2000, adopted in 1990, proposed a unique strategy for coordinating and linking transportation and other infrastructure in communities that wanted to concentrate development into areas served by transit and other modes of operation, including bicycle and pedestrian access. This concept has gained wide support so that the Boston metropolitan plan now identifies 15 areas in the region where municipalities have come forward and requested that a concentrated development center be identified and supported in their community.
Tax Base Sharing
As a former chairman of the Metropolitan Council in Minneapolis pointed out, the tax-base sharing concept is "the most studied and least copied strategy for metropolitan development in the country." However, here in the metropolitan Boston area, three communities, Everett, Malden, and Medford, have recently developed a telecommunications industrial park together and have agreed to share the tax revenue generated from the development using a proportional split. This model has now been made available to other communities through an amendment to Chapter 40-4a of the Massachusetts General Laws.
THE POSSIBILITIES
Through the Metropolitan Initiative, the federal government can be a partner in promoting sustainable development by reaffirming the importance of regional planning and regional cooperation at the metropolitan level. Such a partnership should begin with strong, vocal federal leadership and should be supported by a system of incentives and models with the elements outlined below. In most cases, the partnership must be extended to incorporate not only the various levels of the public sector, but the private sector as well; business leaders must recognize the benefits of metropolitan cooperation and wholeheartedly join the initiative.
General
The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) has created a very successful model for metropolitan cooperation, through the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), which coordinates transportation decision-making among different communities and different levels of government. A similar model should be developed for other resources such as wastewater and air quality. Once these bodies have been created, representatives of the different groups should come together as a comprehensive, interdisciplinary decision-making body to deal with and coordinate crosscutting issues.
Regional Infrastructure and Transportation Upgrades
MetroPlan 2000 promotes sustainable development by discouraging sprawl and encouraging concentrated development. It calls for investing in infrastructure to support these goals. The federal government can help by linking infrastructure investment and sustainable land use planning. Standards could be set to operationalize this relationship. Priority could be given to investments to older, urban areas to make more efficient use of existing infrastructure and prevent sprawl. One example in the Boston metro area is the proposed urban ring, a circumferential public transit link among high-density, inner-ring communities and city neighborhoods and job centers.
Education and Workforce Development Investments
No metropolitan region can truly be deemed healthy if there is an enormous income gap, a mismatch between jobs and worker skills, or lack of opportunity. To create a sustainable economy, the region needs equal educational opportunity achieved through education reform, equitable tax policy, and targeted educational investment. People need to be trained for the jobs of the future and good jobs at good wages. To accomplish this, there needs to be cooperation between business and educational institutions so that training programs can be geared to workforce demands. Additionally, there needs to be more technical and specialized training for the non-college workforce. The federal government can support and encourage regional pilot programs to identify priority skill needs and develop training models.
Community and Economic Development/Revitalization
In promoting concentrated development, the regional growth plan stresses community and economic revitalization in urban centers. The federal government can and does act as a partner through the CDBG and Empowerment Zone programs, among others. Productive reuse of "Brownfields," vacant or underutilized urban sites with contamination or the perception of contamination, is a paradigm for sustainable development, merging economic development and environmental improvement and promoting both environmental preservation and economic opportunity. The federal government can increase financial incentives for targeted brownfields cleanup and reuse and can reduce disincentives, while still holding parties responsible.
Tax and Regulatory Policy Streamlining
Heavy reliance on the local property tax, coupled with the tax cap provisions of Proposition 2 ½, has led to "fiscal zoning," where communities base planning decisions on revenue considerations. The result is often poor and unsustainable planning, along with a failure to consider and address the interlocal impacts of development. The federal government can act as a partner with the region in developing alternatives to the property tax and interlocal tax-sharing models that encourage communities to do solid, long-range planning; preserve essential resources; and cooperate with their neighbors. It is hard to imagine a successful metropolitan initiative that does not tackle the complex and often politically charged issue of tax policy reform.
Environmental Preservation and Restoration
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has a proud record of environmental protection and preservation. The Boston region was the first area in the country to develop a metropolitan park system, metropolitan water and sewer system, wetlands protection, and an expanded restoration system for contaminated brownfield sites. Federal initiatives through the U.S. Office of Environmental Protection, the National Park Service and other strategic partners in the preservation and restoration of critical environmental resources in the Boston region must continue efforts in wastewater treatment, solid waste management protection, hazardous waste cleanup and the restoration of brownfields.
Quality of Life Enhancements
The Boston region's competitive edge in the face of the high cost of doing business and the high cost of living focuses particularly on our quality of life. The federal role in assisting and maintaining the high quality of life in the Boston region focuses on enhancing the existing amenities. Recent examples of this include the clean up of Boston Harbor, the opening of the Third Harbor Tunnel and the ongoing depression of the Central Artery, and the planned expansion of the National Park System to include the Boston Harbor Islands.
(1) Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. 1995. Greater Boston's Leading Industries: Drivers of the Regional Economy.
(2) Moore, Craig. 1997. Connection to the Future: An Analysis of the Telecommunications Industry of Massachusetts. University of Massachusetts, Amherst. May.
(3) Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. 1995. An Economy in Transition: Reducing the High Cost of Doing Business in Massachusetts.