Boston, MA
Meet the new head of the Boston Planning & Redevelopment Agency
Boston’s new chief of planning, Arthur Jemison, is able to hit the bottom working — actually.
Jemison, an Amherst-native and seasoned city planner, lately picked up a brand new pair of New Balances and is able to break them in on a few of his outdated working routes, he stated in an interview with Boston.com.
The newly appointed head of the Boston Planning & Growth Company has deep roots within the metropolis. Within the Nineteen Nineties, he labored for the company he now helms — then the Boston Redevelopment Authority — earlier than heading to Washington, D.C., to work in that metropolis’s planning division beneath Mayor Anthony Williams.
Jemison later returned to the area, taking up a number of public- and private-sector improvement roles, together with posts on the Massachusetts Port Authority and the state’s Division of Housing and Group Growth. He additionally helped lead improvement for the town of Detroit, earlier than leaving for his most up-to-date put up as a senior official on the US Division of Housing and City Growth, the place he led the Workplace of Group Planning and Growth. Now he’s keen to guide in a Boston that seems poised for transformation.
“When Boston decides that it needs to vary, and embraces change within the type of the brand new mayor and among the workforce that she’s introduced in, , I need to be part of that,” Jemison stated. “Having been a proponent of initiatives as a part of my private-sector enterprise I used to be in earlier than, and having labored at a number of of the businesses concerned in improvement, the prospect to be part of altering that panorama for the higher is de facto thrilling to me.”
To date, Jemison, who formally joined the workforce on Metropolis Corridor’s ninth flooring Could 23, has been getting in control on Mayor Michelle Wu’s plans for the way forward for improvement within the metropolis — plans that after included abolishing the division Jemison was tapped to run.
The ideas behind Wu’s name to abolish the BPDA nonetheless stand, Jemison stated, however the focus just isn’t a lot on dismembering the town’s controversial actual property machine, however on creating “a extra clear, resilient, and predictable system for improvement.”
“Abolishing it isn’t form of an finish in and of itself,” Jemison stated. As an alternative, the objective is to make it simpler for Boston residents to take part in every step of the event course of and for builders to have a transparent understanding of the town’s guidelines surrounding improvement.
Jemison and his workforce can even be contemplating the implications of ending the town’s city renewal powers, powers that led to the razing of the West Finish and elements of the South Finish and Roxbury within the Nineteen Fifties and ’60s. Although Wu has already known as on the Metropolis Council to start “sunsetting” a handful of the 14 city renewal plan areas within the metropolis, Jemison was hesitant to name for an finish to the facility.
“Eliminating city renewal must be one thing that’s received to be carried out very thoughtfully,” Jemison stated, noting that his workforce might want to contemplate whether or not city renewal powers could also be relevant to fashionable problems with affordability and local weather resilience.
Local weather is one difficulty Jemison hopes to convey extra quick consideration to as he settles into the position, he stated.
“Given the character of the event enterprise, which requires, , two to 5 years of pipeline and planning to make enhancements, it may well actually sneak up on you the impacts that local weather change can have.”
For now, Jemison is assembly with the varied stakeholders with whom his roles as chief planner and head of improvement intertwine, together with parks and transportation officers, builders, and group members. His hope is that his dual-title will make for a metropolis the place planning and execution, “appears to be like prefer it’s extra seamless,” he stated.
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