Mayor Menino's call for a master plan for development over the Turnpike is welcome news to Back Bay and Fenway residents. It also marks a welcome effort by the City of Boston to reassert its authority over what happens within its borders.

The master plan — properly done — will put existing projects on hold for eight months. During that time the Boston Redevelopment Authority will work with residents, community groups, developers and other business interests to craft a set of development guidelines. Ideally the guidelines will propose uses and building configurations that are both economically feasible and mesh well with neighborhoods along the Pike.

The goal here is not simply to delay for the sake of delay. The goal should be to encourage a development process that will produce real projects that cover what almost everyone acknowledges is an ugly, sunken roadway.

Perhaps as important, however, is that the Mayor's call for master planning marks another effort on Boston's behalf to seize control over its own destiny.

Most casual observers might expect that municipalities such as Boston have control over essentially local matters, such as schooling, policing and, most obviously, zoning. None of these is conventionally thought of as proper matters for the state and federal government.

The reality is quite different. Boston is constantly beset by outside forces that seek to control such seemingly local matters. Oftentimes they are quite successful.

A few examples. The members of the Boston Licensing Board, which issues liquor licenses, are appointed by the Governor. The Mayor and the City Council play no role in what is plainly a local issue.

The Metropolitan District Commission, or MDC, owns enormous tracts of park land and controls major roadways (such as the Jamaicaway, the Fenway, Storrow Drive and Embankment Road) in Boston. But Boston has virtually no say over their management, a fact of which residents alongside those parcels are acutely aware. Thus it is only goodwill on the part of the MDC Commissioner that has allowed nearby residents a say over the Hatch Shell Concerts. City officials are powerless.

Few remember that the football stadium proposed for South Boston almost went ahead despite the city's plain opposition. The reason? The stadium was to be built on Massport-owned land. Indeed, it was intervention from the federal government that finally killed the stadium; Congressman Joe Moakley got the Defense Department to refuse to sell off a small parcel of its land that was necessary for the project to move forward.

And most recently, the state Legislature took away the authority of the Boston police commissioner to unilaterally assign police officers where he saw fit. Whether one agrees substantively with the city's position, it hardly seems reasonable that the state should be in the position of telling Boston how to run its police department.

There's an important principle at play in these instances and in the case of the Turnpike. To the extent possible, government should be as close as possible to those it governs. Why state senators and representatives from Amherst are making decisions about Boston liquor licenses, parks, development projects and policing is hard to fathom.

In all frankness, I am much more confident in the city's own democratic processes than I am in those of the state and federal government, at least when it comes to making decisions about local issues. The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, the Governor and the Legislature are far more immune to concerns from Fenway and Back Bay neighborhoods. The Mayor and the City Council have to listen; if they don't, they lose elections. (I doubt the aforementioned Amherst legislators will find Boston development issues to be a big concern in their elections.)

Boston should be shaped by Bostonians. When it comes to issues like zoning and development, that seems a good place to start. With his call for the master plan, the Mayor has made it clear that's where his heart is as well.