Blueprints for a downtown Boston | Boston Globe

Almost all of Boston is booming and recovering well from the pandemic, but not downtown, where empty offices and vacant storefronts are adding up to a lot of wasted opportunity. 

In a special issue of Globe Ideas, we're proposing several big ideas for turning things around. Our premise: The financial district and surrounding area need a new identity that will make the area more dynamic, more appealing, and more economically resilient. 

Read more from this special issue: 

• Why Downtowns Matter
• Turn empty offices into little factories (a restatement of the Jane Jacobs point about cities needing a large stock of old buildings to seed innovation, without acknowledging JJ)
• Downtown needs an infusion of artists (nice discussion of property acquisition models)
• Give Quincy Market an unsentimental reboot 
• Make Downtown a great place to raise a family (more balanced development, creating neighborhoods instead of exclusively office districts*)
• What Boston can learn from other cities (discussion of how the role of transit is changing in cities as more people work from home)
• Forget the doom loop: American's downtowns are coming back
• The art of seduction for urban planners (cartoon)
• By the numbers: Downtown Boston’s pandemic recovery
• Reader ideas (not scintillating)

* -- "What is the competitive advantage for the post-covid city? Doubling down on place values," 2022

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In 2022 the Globe published a similar series, "The Next Big Dig," making the point that undergrounding the freeway through Central Boston was a big deal, and the city has been timid since.  The thing is that the federal, state and local governments ambitions to do has been dashed in a number of ways.

First, the 1970s oil crises shocked the system, which turned away from innovation that had marked the federal government since the 1930s.  Second, all along there was sentiment by conservatives against big government action--even though a number of New Deal measures had been first proposed by progressive Republicans.  Third, the adoption of neoliberalism as an organizing philosophy of government meant that the private sector was venerated over government action.  Fourth, big projects often have problems and cost overruns, and officials get excoriated over it.  Fifth, constant focus on cutting taxes starves government of the resources it needs to be innovative.  Sixth, people are bad at decision making even in good times.  Seventh, government in these conditions is more about system maintenance than improvememt.

• "Reclaiming our ambition"
• "We have to go bold on housing. How about a new city?"
• "Fixing the T is not enough. We need a massive expansion"
• "Rising seas are coming for Boston. Let’s lift the city"
• "Only sweeping school reform will do"
• "More transformative ideas" from readers including:
• "Government doesn't take enough risks. Let's change that" (interesting points about "public entrepreneurship")
• "We can help people make new connections"  (makes the point that we should be investing in infrastructure using a broader social justice lens)
• "The next Big Dig shouldn't be a dig" (makes the point that we should be investing in infrastructure using a broader social justice lens)
• "‘An obvious project that we’ve just got to do’" (link North and South railroad stations)