Barnes' substance must be in the plan

16 March 2001

Is Rebecca Barnes merely an election-year concession to community activists?

In just a few days, Barnes begins her job as Boston's chief planner. It's a brand new position - remarkably, the city doesn't have one - and it comes on the heels of a recent Herald poll that shows widespread dissatisfaction with the mayor on neighborhood development issues.

Mayor Thomas Menino first proposed creating the position of city planner more than a year ago. At that time, the Boston Redevelopment Authority, the city agency responsible for planning and economic development, was under siege. Menino had just fired its director, Thomas N. O'Brien, and the agency was enduring harsh criticism from the media and community activists on a range of projects. Even then it was clear this was an issue on which the mayor was vulnerable.

And for good reason. The not-too-far-from-the-truth caricature of doing a deal in Boston goes like this: A developer (usually a friend of Menino's) walks into City Hall and shows his plan to the mayor. If he likes it, it's sent to the BRA. The authority noodles about with it and then brings it back to Menino for sign-off. Only then, after the BRA and the mayor have locked themselves into getting the thing built, is there any real effort to talk to other city departments or engage in any sort of community outreach.

Residents often believed they were little more than an annoying afterthought, a point that the authority's current director, Mark Maloney, partially concedes. "We were a little bit out of balance," he says.

So does Barnes' appointment mean anything? Will there be any real change within the BRA?

The answer is a qualified yes - and much of the reason for hope has to do with Barnes herself.

The position itself remains a work in progress. Although paid by the BRA and nominally reporting to its director, the new chief planner will function more like a minister without portfolio. Barnes will have limited authority over other city employees. Instead, it will be her job is to act as a coordinator, bringing the resources of all city departments, including the BRA, to bear on planning issues.

That makes it a tough job. It means that much of Barnes' success will depend on her ability to persuade, cajole and build relationships.

Barnes brings strong credentials to the job. An architect by trade, her life has been a virtual whirlwind of civic activity. She was president of the Boston Society of Architects. Over the last year she has spearheaded the Civic Initiative for a Livable New England, an ongoing effort by several groups, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, to examine issues such as sprawl and the relationship between urban, suburban and rural areas.

In Seattle, where she was assistant director of planning, she wrote the city's growth management plan. She also managed urban design and architecture for the Big Dig where, among other things, she was responsible for the cable-stayed Zakim Bridge that will eventually span the Charles River. Indeed, it was under Barnes' leadership that Big Dig planners introduced the notion of civic beauty to things as mundane as bridges and ventilation buildings.

The fact that Barnes has worked in a political environment before - and gotten things done - is important. Planning has the potential of being an empty exercise, one that creates lots of paper but accomplishes little. An effective planner needs to understand bureaucracies and the inevitable battles over turf. Just as importantly, an effective planner needs to link planning to economically feasible developments. Without that, the result is stagnation.

The BRA has within it some extraordinary talents, all of whom, quite frankly, could be making a lot more in the private sector. But to a disturbing degree, individual developments have been treated as stand-alone projects rather than things that need to fit within an existing urban fabric. That's the problem Barnes needs to fix.

How? One obvious approach is to reach out, earlier and more effectively, to residents and businesses affected by any proposed development. In addition, Barnes plans to make other city departments, such as parks and transportation, integral parts of the planning process. Moreover, she says, any new developments need to be coupled to commitments by the city to build new supporting infrastructure.

To do all this, Barnes needs to change the culture and priorities of what is perhaps the city's most controversial agency. She appears to have allies in Mark Maloney, its director, and Linda Haar, its chief of staff, both of whom say they are committed to incorporating planning in the development process.

But there's one other important piece as well: Tom Menino. Menino seems to be sincerely committed to the notion of a city planner. But the mayor too often fancies himself as the city's real planner, inserting himself early into the development process. He can't have it both ways. For good planning to work, Menino needs to take a step back. He should be the last person developers go to, not the first.