Urban Studies Commons^™

Is There An Economic Case For The Olympic Games?, Chris Dempsey, Victor Matheson

Economics Department Working Papers

The Olympic Games are a major undertaking that promise both large costs and potentially large benefits to host cities. This paper lays out the potential economic benefits of hosting the Olympics and details how, in the vast majority of cases, these gains are unlikely to cover the costs of hosting the event. The ideas are then applied to the experience of Boston in its ultimately unsuccessful bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics.

Gentrification As Anti-Local Economic Development: The Case Of Boston, Massachusetts, James Jennings

Trotter Review

Activists and political leaders across the city of Boston are concerned that gentrification in the form of rapidly rising rents in low-income and the poorest areas are contributing to displacement of families and children. Rising home sale prices and an increasing number of development projects are feeding into this concern. There is also a growing wariness about the impact that this scenario can have on small and neighborhood-based businesses and microenterprises whose markets are represented by the kinds of households facing potential displacement. This potential side-effect suggests that gentrification could actually emerge as anti-local economic development in Boston. It can …

“Separatist City”: The Mandela, Massachusetts (Roxbury) Movement And The Politics Of Incorporation, Self-Determination, And Community Control, 1986–1988, Zebulon V. Miletsky, Tomás González

Trotter Review

November 4, 2016, marks 30 years since the historic referendum in which close to 50,000 citizens of Boston living in or near the predominantly Black area of “Greater Roxbury” voted on whether the area should leave Boston and incorporate as a separate municipality to be named in honor of former South African president Nelson and Winnie Mandela, or remain a part of Boston. The new community, what planners called “Greater Roxbury,” would have included wards in much or all of the neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, Jamaica Plain, the Fenway, the South End, and what was then known as Columbia …

Community Land Trusts: A Powerful Vehicle For Development Without Displacement, May Louie

Trotter Review

In the Great Recession of 2007–2009, Boston’s communities of color were hit hard. A 2009 map of foreclosures looked like a map of the communities of color—Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan. The one island of stability was a section of Roxbury called the Dudley Triangle—home to the community land trust of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI).

Originally established to respond to the community’s vision of “development without displacement,” the land trust model was adopted to help residents gain control of land and to use that control to prevent families from being priced out as they organized to improve their neighborhood. …

From Disinvestment To Displacement: Gentrification And Jamaica Plain’S Hyde-Jackson Squares, Jen Douglas

Trotter Review

In this essay, I offer a place-based history of socioeconomic and demographic change in Hyde Square and nearby Jackson Square (henceforth “Hyde-Jackson Squares”). I document the area’s ongoing gentrification and describe the distribution of gentrification pressures. I situate this contemporary process against the socio-spatial patterns carved out by the area’s historical rise as an industrial suburb, its struggle amid decades of disinvestment, and the community efforts that ultimately stabilized the neighborhood. In these sequential transformations is the story of how Latinos and Blacks entered, departed, and have strived to remain in the neighborhood.

Urban Inspiration Can Come From Unlikely Sources: What Boston Can Learn From Cities In Transition Around The World, Andrew Tarsy

New England Journal of Public Policy

Boston is a city in transition, with power passing to a new mayor for the first time in a generation. The capital of New England should consider the examples of cities around the world in defining its next agenda. The urban centers that make up the Forum for Cities in Transition have all endured years of conflict and yet each continues to plan for a better future. Belfast, Nicosia, and Kaduna might not be role models for Boston; but three consensus points came out of the group’s recent summit: (1) it is hard to move forward without confronting the past; …

The Silent Crisis: Including Latinos And Why It Matters, Representation In Executive Positions, Boards, And Commissions In The City Governments Of Boston, Chelsea, And Somerville, Miren Uriarte, James Jennings, Jen Douglas

Human Services Faculty Publication Series

The Silent Crisis: Involving Latinos in Decision-Making & Why Latino Representation Matters provides a measure of the economic, social, and political inclusion of Latinos at mid-decade in three cities of the Commonwealth where about one fourth of the state’s Latino population lives. Often wrongly referred to as a “new population,” Latinos have been present in Massachusetts since the end of the 19th century, arriving in large numbers beginning in the 1960s and 1970s and growing to nearly 630,000 persons (9.6% of the population) by 2010. That same year, they accounted for 62.1% of the population of Chelsea, 17.5% of the …

Healthy Eating And Savvy Saving: An Evaluation Of Action For Boston Community Development’S Food Dollars Program For Low-Income Elders, Ann Bookman, Susan M. Phillips

Gerontology Institute Publications

This report is an evaluation of an innovative community-based intervention – the Food Dollars Program. Funded by the AARP Foundation, this program was designed and delivered by Action for Boston Community Development (ABCD) and their Elder Services staff in order to promote healthy eating and reduce food and economic insecurity among low-income elders in Boston. The impetus for creating this program arose from the challenges many low-income individuals face in purchasing and consuming healthy foods from the five food groups as recommended by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) in their ChooseMyPlate model of healthy eating. The Food Dollars curriculum …

Cycling Historiography, Evidence, And Methods, Lorenz J. Finison

Boston’s Cycling Craze, 1880-1900: A Story of Race, Sport, and Society

My purpose in Boston’s Cycling Craze, 1880-1900, was to unearth a largely hidden social cycling history from the point of view of the ordinary, not the famous. While there were many Boston connections to racing champions like Major Taylor, Eddie McDuffee, and Nat Butler, and there are abundant sources of evidence about them, the research was not just about them, nor just about bicycle racing, nor just about unique or fast bikes. I wanted to write about what bicycling meant to ordinary citizens of Boston and its surrounding towns— and to write about the worsening social climate of the …

Managing Up: Managing Diversity In Challenging Times, Helen Levine

Commonwealth Compact

Commonwealth Compact is an organization formed to help make Massachusetts a location of choice for people of color and women in the belief that their contributions are vital to the region’s social and economic future. The need for an initiative such as Commonwealth Compact stems from a number of factors. As racial and ethnic diversity increases across the nation, business and civic leaders agree that it is critical to reverse the reputation that Massachusetts and Greater Boston, in particular, have not been seen as a welcoming, diverse place to live and work for people of color. Without a better reputation …

Mattapan United Community Questionnaire, Mattapan United, Center For Social Policy, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Center for Social Policy Publications

In the winter and spring of 2012, the Steering Committee of the Mattapan United Resilient Communities/Resilient Families project undertook an assessment of community members’ attitudes and opinions for use in planning and program development.

The Committee was assisted in this endeavor by the Center for Social Policy (CSP), McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies, University of Massachusetts Boston. The work of CSP is supported by a grant from The Boston Foundation to provide analytical and evaluation assistance for its Fairmount Initiative along the Fairmount/Indigo Corridor of Boston.

The questionnaire was widely disseminated throughout Mattapan in hard copy and …

A Historical Overview Of Poverty Among Blacks In Boston, 1950-1990, Robert C. Hayden

Trotter Review

Like most nineteenth-century residents of Boston, blacks worked hard to maintain their homes and families. Even before the Civil War, both enslaved and free blacks in "freedom's birthplace" worked long and arduous hours. Those who migrated to Boston from the South in the 1800s had come to secure higher wages, mobility, and opportunity for themselves and their families. Boston's black population grew from 2,000 in 1850 to 8,125 in 1890, and to 11,591 by 1900. In 1900, 39 percent of black Bostonians were northern-born (New England, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania), and 53 percent were southern-born.

Residential segregation for …

Pastor Brunson's Shofar, Richard Tenorio

Trotter Review

A short story by Richard Tenorio of sibling love and sacrificed ambition, which is set in Roxbury, traditionally the twentieth-century home territory for blacks in Boston. Today, Roxbury is poised on the lip of gentrification, and blacks in Boston are on the move again, seeking home and security and belonging.

Characteristics Of Homeless Individuals Accessing Massachusetts Emergency Shelters, 1999-2001, Tatjana Meschede, Michelle Kahan, Michelle Hayes, Donna Friedman

Center for Social Policy Publications

The Center for Social Policy (CSP) at the McCormack Institute, University of Massachusetts Boston oversees the Connection, Service, and Partnership through Technology (CSPTech) project. CSPTech operates a homeless management information system being implemented throughout the Commonwealth. Founded in 1995, this project is a networked computerized record-keeping system that allows homeless service providers across Massachusetts to collect uniform client information over time. This information is aggregated in a database used by service providers, advocates, government officials, researchers, and people experiencing homelessness. Analysis of this information is critical to efforts to understand the extent of this problem in Massachusetts in an attempt …

Race, Poverty And Education In The 21st Century, Joan Wallace-Benjamin

Trotter Review

I am here as the president of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts. I am here as a woman. I am here as a partner in the struggle for equal opportunity and access for - women, men, young people, the elderly, Black, white, Latino and Asian, who are not able to fully enjoy the educational, economic and social benefits of our American society. I am here as a colleague of Mary's, [Mary Lassen, Executive Director, Women's Educational and Industrial Union] who works with commitment and passion on these same issues and with whom I have collaborated and will continue to …

Eastward Ho: Issues And Options In Regional Development For The Metropolitan Boston Region, Robert C. Wood, Laura C. Ghirardini, Lori L. Prew, Aundrea Kelley

McCormack Graduate School General Publications (active until 2013)

Conventional wisdom suggests that the basic job of public policy studies (and public institutions, for that matter) is to deal in a timely and practical fashion with pressing public issues of the day. The focus typically is on 'ripe' topics, 'hot' political problems. If a study can be ahead of the curve, in John Kingdon's apt phrase "an idea whose time has come," so much the better. But unlike more traditional academic research, where the focus is timeless — i.e., an explanation of previously inexplicable phenomena, timeliness is a prime reason for initiating a policy study.

In this context, analyzing …

A Snapshot Of Individuals And Families Accessing Boston's Emergency Homeless Shelters, 1997, Donna Friedman, Michelle Hayes, John Mcgah, Anthony Roman

Center for Social Policy Publications

This document summarizes key findings from a survey conducted on March 19, 1997 with 338 homeless individuals and 94 families sheltered or served by 33 of 40 shelter programs in the City of Boston. The data presented in this report were collected at one point in time. Point in time data results in an overrepresentation of the "longer term" homeless, and offers limited insight regarding the structural dynamics underlying movement from homelessness to residential stability (Culhane, Lee, Wachter, 1996; White, 1996). However, it does provide a snapshot of the men, women, and children who were spending the night in a …

Managing The Central Artery/Tunnel Project: An Exploration Of Potential Cost Savings, Allan K. Sloan

McCormack Graduate School General Publications (active until 2013)

The John W. McCormack Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Massachusetts Boston is an institution whose primary mission is public service. Through public policy research, educational programs, policy practice and the dissemination ofknowledge, the Institute seeks to have a constructive impact on policy formulation, problem solving and public discourse concerning urgent civic challenges facing state and local government in the New England region.

In 1996, under Chapter 205 of the 1996 Acts and Resolves, the Massachusetts legislature authorized the Institute to undertake a study *to review and explore possible cost savings within the Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel project" …

Shelter Poverty: Housing Affordability Among Asian Americans, Michael E. Stone

Institute for Asian American Studies Publications

Relatively little research has been conducted that focuses on the housing situation of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans (hereafter generally referred to as Asian Americans), especially on the national level. From a review of about 30 articles and reports over the past decade that examine racial/ethnic housing situations nationally, only one specifically addressed housing problems of Asian Americans (Hansen, 1986) while two others included Asian Americans along with other populations of color. Of the remaining articles, most used the terms race, racial discrimination, or segregation in their titles, yet did not include Asian Americans in the studies. Of particular note, …

Preliminary Report On A Comparative Analysis Of The Underlying Dimensions Of Unemployment Among Blacks, Hispanics, And Whites In Boston, Jeremiah Cotton

William Monroe Trotter Institute Publications

There are four major objectives of this research. The first objective is to determine whether and to what extent differences in unemployment rates in Boston among black, Hispanic, and white workers are due to the following: (1) the differences in the percentage of individuals in each group who experience a spell of unemployment at one time or another during the year, that is the incidence of unemployment; or (2) the differences in the average number of spells of unemployment during the year, that is the frequency of unemployment; or (3) the differences in the average length of time a spell …

Remembering Who We Were: Boston Books, 1986, Shaun O'Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

Shaun O'Connell's essay, "Remembering Who We Were," gives a Boston perspective to our search for self, identity, and possibility. For its writers, he concludes, "Boston remains a vibrant state of mind, an occasion for sustained verbal reflection, a site of personal and cultural conflict, a city still in the making." And while there may be anxieties "beneath its high-tech prosperity, its high-style glitz and its political clout ... over the separations between the people we once were and those we have become or those we might become" — that "might" will be immeasurably strengthened if policymakers adhere to policies that …

Getting Power Back: Court Restoration Of Executive Authority In Boston City Government, Marcy M. Murninghan

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article chronicles some of the events that occurred when a state and a federal court attempted to disengage from active jurisdiction over two Boston public systems: the public schools and the Boston Housing Authority (BHA). It makes three proposals which, if enacted, would help to keep the courts out of day-to-day management of municipal operations. It also makes some generalizations about the court-agency interplay which are relevant to the postremedial phase of institutional reform litigation. The author uses the term restorative law to describe this court-controlled process of returning power to the executive branch.

Boston In Transition: A Financial Analysis, Raymond L. Flynn, Financial Analysis Research Group, John W. Mccormack Institute Of Public Affairs, University Of Massachusetts Boston

McCormack Graduate School General Publications (active until 2013)

The new Mayor of Boston must earn the confidence of the taxpaying public in his financial leadership by employing credibility and candor in the management of city affairs.

To begin the process of re-enfranchising Bostonians who have come to mistrust financial decisions seemingly determined by political calculations, the new Mayor must make an accurate disclosure of the City's financial picture, rely on the commitment of the state to properly support its capital city and restore integrity and strong management controls to government operations. Recommendations for budget cuts, hiring freezes and adjustments in tax rates, when they are necessary, should only …

Issues Facing Boston: 1984, Housing, Phillip L. Clay

McCormack Graduate School General Publications (active until 2013)

The housing problem in Boston is one issue facing the new council which offers both opportunity and complexity. In a city where 70 percent of the households are tenants, where incomes are low and housing expensive, and where major demographic and economic changes are taking place, easy answers are not available. But housing, unlike other issues, is a matter over which the city has some leverage so that progress will be noted and appreciated by an increasingly attentive electorate.

In recent years, the city has not faced the challenge of greater local discretion in housing policy (made available by the …

Housing Issues In Boston: Guidelines For Options And Strategies, Joseph S. Slavet

McCormack Graduate School General Publications (active until 2013)

Most of the recent analyses of Boston's housing problem reveal a complex and contradictory mix of positive trends and negative factors, clouded by a growing percentage of poor and near-poor resident households in the City and declining commitments by the federal government to housing, particularly for subsidies of new housing production.

That Boston's housing problem, unlike that of many other large cities, is of manageable proportions, however, is attributable mainly to the following demographic trends and forecasts that are not likely to exacerbate the problem and that many even ease some of the most serious current and future pressures of …

Boston's Housing In 1984: Issues And Opportunities, Rolf Goetze

McCormack Graduate School General Publications (active until 2013)

Sharp cutbacks in federal aid for housing and community development now challenge Boston to become more resourceful in its housing strategies. In the neighborhoods where new solutions are needed, much has already been happening that can be adapted and expanded. Fortunately, the City's resurgence can also help achieve more results with less public resources, but a fresh approach involving community interests is essential. At the same time, local laws, procedures and programs devised to address past problems must also be critically re-evaluated to determine their appropriateness to the new realities.

Confidence in Boston's future is being uplifted, and many neighborhoods …

Future Issues Facing Boston: The Assessing Department, Janet L. Hunkel

McCormack Graduate School General Publications (active until 2013)

Taxpayers' opinions of municipal government often focus on the property tax. Taxpayers are stingy, and they are critical as to whether their money is purchasing competent services. For citizens to have faith that government is democratic, taxes must be equitable — everyone must pay their fair share. For government to function efficiently, tax administration must be efficient in order to support city services.

The property tax is a complex, difficult tax to administer; it is vulnerable to misuse. However, there have been recent, dramatic changes to the tax laws. Municipal government in Massachusetts now has the political and legal wherewithall …

Future Issues Facing Boston: Financing Of The City's Operating And Capital Construction Program, J. Chester Johnson

McCormack Graduate School General Publications (active until 2013)

This paper reviews the important factors affecting the current status of debt finance and debt management by the City of Boston, including the City's significant credit problems and the financing implications. While significant challenges to Boston's finance and debt management have recently been met in part through a combination of fiscal austerity measures and altered operating and financing approaches, there are important new debt financing challenges facing Boston in 1984 and beyond.

Shelter Poverty In Boston: Problem And Program, Michael E. Stone

McCormack Graduate School General Publications (active until 2013)

This paper argues, first, that most housing problems—in Boston and throughout the nation—are ultimately the result of the squeeze between inadequate incomes, on the one hand, and the cost of profitably providing housing on the other. It is also argued that housing cost and incomes together are the most decisive determinants of the overall quality of life of families and communities. Third, it is contended that the long history of inadequate attempts to cope with the affordabiiity problem have not only failed to solve the problem, but have indeed contributed significantly to the broader and serious problems of the overall …

Boston's Fiscal Future: Prognosis And Policy Options For 1984 To 1986, Joseph S. Slavet, Raymond G. Torto

McCormack Graduate School General Publications (active until 2013)

The finances of the City of Boston have been variously affected throughout its long history by regional and national economic cycles, by legal constraints and changes in the state-local tax system and by inter-municipal resource and expenditure disparities.

In more recent years, however, a series of tremors converged to propel Boston's seemingly chronic fiscal problem to the crisis stage. As inflation climbed to unprecedented double-digit levels, an overwhelming majority of the state's populace supported specific limits on property taxes, the primary source of municipal revenue. As a result, Boston was forced to reduce property tax levies by $144 million during …