By Felix D. Arroyo

Most residents are probably unaware that there is no city planning department in Boston.

Boston did once have a Planning Board to "make careful studies of the resources, possibilities and needs of the city." But in 1960, the Boston Redevelopment Authority, an independent agency which had been established to promote development, absorbed the Planning Board and its planning powers. Boston became the only city in the United States without a planning department separate from its redevelopment authority. Ever since, our comprehensive planning has been sacrificed to promote individual development projects.

Accountability, more specifically the lack thereof, is the essential problem at the Boston Redevelopment Authority. It answers to the mayor, who appoints the BRA director and most of the BRA board. The City Council has been almost entirely sidelined in the zoning, regulatory, and other decisions that shape planning in Boston. The BRA operates almost entirely outside the traditional checks-and-balances system essential to the operation of good government and a genuine working democracy.

The problem at the BRA is not one of personnel or work ethic but one of organizational structure and mission. The remedy will not be more resources or better leadership. The BRA should simply no longer have the conflicting responsibilities of ensuring that Boston is promoting investment and at the same time planning to meet the long-term economic, housing, educational and public-health needs of our people.

The solution is to re-establish a separate city planning department.

Some will say we cannot afford a new planning department given the state of the economy and the fiscal crisis facing Boston. The reality is that Boston is already paying far more for "planning" than would be needed to operate a separate city planning department. Today, the city of Boston actually subsidizes the BRA through free office space in City Hall.

Moreover, the BRA takes by eminent domain city-owned property, such as the $23 million Hayward Place parcel, to lease or sell to developers without compensation to the city treasury. The BRA even hands out millions of dollars a year in tax breaks for developers and pays virtually no property taxes for its own land.

Concurrently, the non-financial benefits of a new planning department also would be multifold. Boston would finally have comprehensive, long-term, need-driven (rather than project-driven) planning. It would have zoning consistent with those plans, broad goals and specific performance standards.

Planning would shape development and not the other way around. Consistent with new state policies of "smart growth," Boston could finally integrate planning for jobs, housing, environmental protection, transportation and business development. A planning department could take on these issues in a way that is accountable to the City Council and responsive to our constituents through oversight processes.

The planning and development structure in Boston hasn't been revisited in more than 40 years, and the city has changed. My staff and I will work diligently over the next year to create a city planning department, structured to foster an open, inclusive process that educates the public, engages citizens in informed decision-making and returns planning to the people of Boston. We welcome the input of Boston residents as we move forward.

Felix D. Arroyo is an at-large Boston city councillor.