Boston 2030 team walks, rides, talks, and listens

Continuing efforts to shape the city’s first major planning study in 50 years, the Imagine Boston 2030 team took to the streets, waters, and rails last week to talk about their mission and gather feedback from community members.

Imagine Boston 2030 Week offered tours to groups of residents of zones targeted for increased attention through the initiative along with data presentations and panel discussions.

The team’s 152-page draft document still has room for input and improvement, officials say, before a second draft is compiled in early 2017 and a final iteration rolled out in the spring.

Dorchester is home to parkland, waterfronts, and key transit lines that were the focus of Imagine Boston 2030 Week events. As the city booms, neighborhoods are feeling the pinch differently, the document’s authors note. Those with higher proportions of minority residents face disproportionate challenges in quality of life, the report’s authors note, as disparities in income, education level, homeownership, transit equity, and access to healthcare persist.

“These disparities are consistent with national trends and represent challenges that other growing cities face,” the report states. “Solutions to address these trends must respond to Boston’s history of race relations and current geographic segregation.”

During a series of public outings intended to draw in new voices and ideas from the neighborhoods, groups of city and state officials called out through megaphones to residents, who in turn pressed them for specifics on investments and priorities.

Reporter staff joined a walking tour down Columbia Road from Franklin Park for a discussion about completing the Emerald Necklace and took a round-trip excursion on the Fairmount Line during which the topic was potential investment along the commuter-line corridor.


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