Under Construction Growth and Development in Massachusetts

SUMMARY: The following is a summary of remarks made at the forum. It is not a verbatim transcript and should not be relied upon as such. This summary was prepared by State House News Service and is reprinted here with permission.

IAN BOWLES, MASSINC PRESIDENT: Good morning. I thank the Federal Reserve Bank for the opportunity to come here and work on rising interest rates and civic affairs. Thanks to 38 organizations listed here for their work to make this possible. They represent the full range of interest groups from building trades to developers to environmentalists and others. In Commonwealth magazine, they put their issues in the hands of a bunch of journalists who they have no control over. Growth and development is fundamentally important. We face an affordability crisis, population loss for two years running. This is a state that has lived by its wits and it’s being undermined by the way we grow and it’s a threat to our economy. This is our quadrennial election cycle. We can ask the candidates and the media to do more. We have a history of a decline in the quality of debate. We can look for a little more substance. It’s our tenth anniversary and we are going to push for more substantive debate in the media. Thanks to members of our board for making this possible and friends of MassINC and advisors. Thanks to the editors of Commonwealth magazine. This is a complex topic and they did a great job of giving life to it. Thanks to MassINC staff who met you and greeted you.

ROBERT KEOUGH, COMMONWEALTH MAGAZINE EDITOR (MODERATOR): It’s a pleasure to introduce Joel Kotkin. When we started planning the growth and development issue, I knew Joel Kotkin had to play a role. I thought about the suburbs. As important as urban development is, it struck me that some of the core issues we needed to look at were in the suburbs, and making them work for everyone. In 2002, we posed the question why can’t an average family buy an average home in eastern Massachusetts? I asked David Luberoff who can I talk to? He said what about Joel Kotkin? He wrote an essay about how suburbia is not going away and how to make suburban life more conducive to growth. He is not just a suburban theorist. He spends as much time thinking and writing about cities and how they grow and thrive. He is a proponent of making cities work for all. He is bold, provocative and persuasive and a big thinker on a set of topics where we need big thinking most.

Joel Kotkin

JOEL KOTKIN, NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION IRVINE SENIOR FELLOW: I don’t know if the follow up will be as good as the setup. I am very interested in what the panelists are going to say. I got into suburban interests because as I studied the history of cities, I watched the progression go from one thing to another and there was no question that suburbanization and decentralization was a prominent theme. The same process is taking place in other countries. I can give you a brief history. In the beginning of the book, I talk about a sense of why cities rise and fall. Cities are great and then are small. They are always changing in their importance and population. We have seen such enormous changes. You can look back at Pittsburgh 30, 40 years ago, or New York relative to the rest of the country. Look at the rise of Shanghai 20 years ago and now. Inertia is important but progress and change are also important. What makes cities decline? The inability to absorb newcomers. That’s always a major problem. If they were able to bring people in and integrate them, it was an enormous strength. Those that repelled newcomers generally had much greater problems. Upward mobility. It’s probably the biggest issue to be discussed today. A city needs to be a place where people can come and use the urban environment to lift themselves and their families up. I am from New York. People from New York came to Boston because of the quality of life and it was not as big and it was a place of opportunity. Bernie Goldhirsh started Inc. magazine and went to MIT. The history of Boston is the history of a place able to thrive by attracting the young and ambitious and then keeping them, which is probably more of your problem. There has been so much emphasis on being hip and cool, but a lot of it is about people being able to get around, having a shady tree in the summer, taking kids to the park, really basic stuff. Lack of security is huge. You have had some crime problems in Boston. This is an enormous problem and I don’t think it is going away. More cities have died because of lack of security than anything else. Last is loss of a moral compass. A city has to have a sense of sacredness. People have to be able to do something irrational for that city. I will do things for Los Angeles that I won’t do for other places. When you have nomadic populations, the city is something to use as opposed to identify with. Fernand Braudel said cities that were best were cities that were tolerant and that came out of the commercial environment. I had many disagreements with Miss Jane Jacobs. She said a metropolitan economy constantly transforms pool people into the middle class. This is a personal thing to me. My family came from Russia to New York and New York City nurtured my family into the middle class. Some of my relatives are not the brightest people in the world. New York was able to transform people. I can’t think of a more important role for cities.

One thing that changed cities – they were kind of similar, religious and political centers and marketplaces. We have this familiarity of cities, and what changed around 1800 was the Industrial Revolution. They were a place of artisanship and the trade of goods and they became a place of mass production. Britain was the first city with an urban majority. Death rates in the countryside were four or five times less than the city of Manchester. The middle class had to operate this growing machine. They would move as far away as they could and still get to work. Aristocrats made money in this often cruel and creative way and they married the daughters of the real Aristocrats and they moved out and got on Masterpiece Theater. The working class got stuck in these pretty awful places. A German demographer did a study – I always thought of the medieval city as compact, but he found they had narrow streets but they had gardens and fruit trees and it was 100 square meters per person. By the Industrial Revolution, it was 20 meters. Frederick Engels described cottages in Manchester as very small, old and dirty, while the streets are uneven, partly unpaved, not properly drained and full of ruts. As your read about the growth of suburbia, there was this sense of liberation with yards. We can laugh about Levittown, but it was enormously successful. The great theorist on this, Ebenezer Howard, had this notion of the Garden City, where people lived and worked and there would be local churches and it would be child friendly. There was this whole progressive movement. Cities were cleaned up, and developed parks and commuter trains. There had to be some way to deal with the industrial cities. What also occurred for a long time is what is called the universal aspiration. We say today that we have to live in density, but the great majority of people want the single-family home. It is their biggest investment and a way of life. This is a global phenomenon. Suburbanization long-term has been happening. My wife’s family is from Paris and in the outer rings it is amazingly like Orange County. There is talk about suburbs dying because of high energy prices and they will flock to the cities. In the 70s, we had a steeper increase in energy prices and the urban population actually dropped. This pattern has gone on for a long time. In the 20s, the change started. In recent decades, urban growth is in suburbanized cities like Phoenix, Houston and L.A. You have immigration and more people being born than dying. The flows are interesting. The shift to smaller more livable cities has been quite strong. There has been a negative out-migration from big cities and I think the next movement will be into even smaller cities. About 16 of the 20 fastest growing are small cities. The population is moving more to the suburbs than into the city. It’s just not the case that people are moving into the cities. When you live in New York, you don’t realize that people are moving more out than in. Many more empty nesters move out than in. About 70 percent stay put. They want a suburban village. So they may move further out or to a small town. The two biggest increases in activities are gardening and birding and you don’t do that in a high-rise condo. There are only a handful of inner core cities that are worth living in – this is one of them – and they are extraordinarily expensive. Anyone in Quebec with money is in Florida in February. Where are college grads going? Las Vegas, Charlotte, Phoenix, Atlanta, West Palm Beach. The brainpower has really spread out to places that have nice weather and where there is economic opportunity. Baby Boomers have a skewed view of the world. We don’t understand what it looks like to someone who is 30. They say they’d love to live and work somewhere but they say I will never be able to buy a house there. That is a very chilling thought from the point of view of metropolitan areas. Cook County, Chicago and San Francisco, Boston, Minneapolis are losing people. Look at Boston, loss of population in the inner city, small growth in inner ring suburbs and the growth is in the middle and outer ring, which is really New Hampshire. The immigrants are going to the middle ring and inner-ring suburbs. Outside Los Angeles, there are endless Chinese malls. It’s like Taipei on steroids. How do you adjust to this trend? You can make the argument that the very high end remains in Boston and San Francisco but there is a huge hollowing out of the middle of the economy. Boston has held its own in business services, maybe lost a little ground. A young person is less likely to go to New York, San Jose, San Francisco from here today. We have seen growth in places like Provo and Boise and Los Angeles. The job creation is nothing like it was and is much less in middle class jobs. What’s the future of cities? I have written about the ephemeral city. It’s like a Disneyland for adults. They are becoming touristic. Private sector business declines. The mayor of Berlin called the city poor but sexy. Kevin Starr of San Francisco called it a cross between Carmel and Calcutta. He also calls it a theme park for restaurants. You need to build on culture, shorter commutes, religious institutions. Churches are closing and being turned into discos. It’s one of the saddest things. Stress improvements in schools, nature, business climate, and preserve some economic function. Boston is well positioned to survive this transition. You have great hospitals, higher education, beautiful architecture. Address the middle class flight and keep families around as long as possible. Create a better quality of life out in the suburbs. I don’t think sprawl is going to stop. I think we are going to see sprawl beyond sprawl. In parts of Central Massachusetts, you need to have suburbs, but suburbs that are different. Develop economies so people can live and work there. An opportunity is for people to work at home or close to home. You have this shell to build this downtown core in these small towns. The population is going to be 400 million in 2050. They have to go somewhere. They don’t want to live in high rises in Boston. They can’t sell these high-density things in the suburbs. I am skeptical about light rail. We can do lots of things with light rail. We should invest in transit. The big increase is in people working at home, a great thing for many towns in central Massachusetts, the only real engines for future population growth that you have. Naperville, Illinois is an example of new suburbanization. Some things are being done in The Woodlands, Texas. Naperville is the downtown for a whole series of other suburbs. They have really done a great job. The dispersed multi-polar city is here to stay. We have to figure out how to use our geography more efficiently. You’ve got to stop complaining about historical trends and learn to adapt to them. Digital technology offers huge, long-term opportunities for dispersed livable cities. It’s the most hopeful note. We can have open space in between villages and people living in a fashion that is more pre-industrial, more of the Garden City ideal, without what some call the idiocy of rural life.

ROBERT KEOUGH, COMMONWEALTH MAGAZINE EDITOR (MODERATOR): Thanks for the stimulating keynote address. We have a terrific set of panelists to react and go beyond it and focus on challenges specific to Massachusetts. Ed Glaeser, you have called the ephemeral city the skilled city. We have reports from the Census Bureau of population decline and job losses. Have we reached the limits of the skilled city?

Edward Glaeser

EDWARD GLAESER, RAPPAPORT INSTITUTE DIRECTOR: I don’t think so. The link is stronger in cold and old places. Los Angeles grows without any discernable skill base whatsoever. It has climate and low taxes. For places like Boston, designed for technologies that have become obsolete, skills are what we have. The key to Boston’s success is a process of reinvention. Skilled entrepreneurs figure out the new, new thing for the city. We have recovered from a declining manufacturing city. I believe entrepreneurs will play a critical role. Reinvention is awfully unpredictable so the process is not automatic. We may move from an info-tech employment base to biotech, but biotech may not pan out. It may not be the same economic engine. The signs look good. Remember, Boston had a tough period between 1930 and 1970. None of this stuff is automatic. It depends on luck and skilled leadership. The skilled city model is really what we have. It is our comparable advantage. The signs do basically look good. We are skilled to begin with and we got more skilled over the last 20 years. Certainly I am bullish over the next 20 to 30 years over the process of reinvention. Housing is absolutely critical. People want to live in suburban communities and we have to compete with places like the Research Triangle.

ROBERT KEOUGH, COMMONWEALTH MAGAZINE EDITOR (MODERATOR): Kairos, are we in danger of having Boston turn into an ephemeral city?

Kairos Shen

KAIROS SHEN, BOSTON REDEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY PLANNING DIRECTOR: I was surprised that we did not show up as being an ephemeral city. I am alarmed but heartened to be in a group like New York and San Francisco, places that I would consider living. I may sound like an urban apologist but it seems the problems Boston faces is a trend that is occurring in other cities. We have to focus on what is Boston, what is our competitive advantage? I am an urban planner and designer. We have to look at what will make Boston a unique place. The idea of cool is a fuzzy way of describing something we know, the quality of the physical environment. I think of loft buildings that are cool now but they are well built and are able to be transformed for a different use. We have to make sure that what we do now is not throwaway, that we build in the infrastructure and the ability to transform so when we reinvent ourselves, we take advantage of it. We need to make sure that we don’t dumb down our cities. The cities cannot survive without the outer ring and the suburbs. There are choices that are offered. The conflict is between diversity and uniformity. It’s bad if all the cities are the same. The conflict is not between cities and suburbs. Let’s do the best suburbs you can do and the best cities you can do.

ROBERT KEOUGH, COMMONWEALTH MAGAZINE EDITOR (MODERATOR): Doug Foy, you recently retired from official responsibility for these topics. Joel talks about sprawl as declustering and suggests the trends of decentralized development are inevitable. Does that make smart growth policies an exercise in futility?

Doug Foy

DOUG FOY, FORMER SECRETARY OF COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT: No I don’t think so. But let me commend Joel for his presentation. He has been unfairly demonized by the smart growth movement. I agreed with 95 percent of what he said. I am taken by the notion of an archipelago of villages. I heard him say you need to think about building more thoughtfully in the suburban centers and finding those village opportunities. We have been trying to focus people on opportunities we already have. Our competitive advantage is the existence of great second-tier cities and neighborhoods. The really interesting opportunities is what’s going to happen in the Quincys, Lowells, Lawrences, Lynns, the New Bedfords, where there is an enormous potential for affordable housing and this archipelago. You have towns where you do get some compactness and some collection of jobs and the opportunity to walk. The key to that and the long-term requirement for any state is to make sure Commonwealth investment dollars are targeted at those opportunities. When I got into government, we had a tradition of not really caring about that. We kept building community colleges outside of our towns for instance. We are rapidly pulling schools out of our towns and putting them on the edges of towns so no one can walk there anymore. We shouldn’t do that in Concord or in Boston. We refused to build sewerage capacity, which requires building into the countryside. One of the perverse disincentives is 100 years of relatively dumb zoning built around the notion of separated uses with housing and industry and commerce in different areas. Now we have commerce that’s appealing and the notion of mixing uses back together is still prohibited by zoning in most places, which is nuts. It doesn’t allow us to build what we want to build. We have got to break down those zoning laws. We have to allow places that we used to build. I am happy to have that happen in Concord, or the Berkshires, or Revere or a Quincy. I should have recruited Joel four years ago.

ROBERT KEOUGH, COMMONWEALTH MAGAZINE EDITOR (MODERATOR): Young Park, you have the City Square development going on in Worcester. Listening to the development patterns, does that make you feel good about the investment or nervous?

Young Park

YOUNG K. PARK, BERKELEY INVESTMENTS PRESIDENT AND PRINCIPAL: It’s both frankly. There are grounds to be very optimistic. We own the downtown mall. There is reason to be pessimistic. Worcester is the proverbial doughnut where everything happens on the outside. As we look at the project, there is an opportunity to take advantage of these tensions that are occurring between what makes a second-tier city viable in the short-term and in the long-term. Worcester has enjoyed a revival not so much because people find it cool or interesting, but because a group of people is taking care of the basics. There is tremendous improvement in the infrastructure, the connections to the Mass Pike and Rte. 146, commuter rail. The crime rate is down. People feel the basics are in place. The housing market is very favorable compared to Boston. But people have to want to be in Worcester not just for the short-term. The way to grow a city and make it viable is to create job opportunities so people can feel good about buying a house and living there and planning for the future. You have 35,000 students and great universities and hospitals. Will Worcester win the race against the hollowing out of the economy and create a city where people have choices of entertainment and housing and downtown living versus living in the outer suburb? We feel we can make a significant contribution and the project capitalizes on everything that has been good about Worcester. It’s a tipping point, a mixed use downtown. It’s going to create a different type of housing choice that does not exist now. Whether the projects succeed or not, the city has to be complimented for their willingness to take the risk of putting $82 million in taxpayer dollars to work in a project. As we know development projects are fraught with risk. By taking that risk, people are saying they are going to change the image of the city. If you do, as Lowell has been able to do, then the suburbia and the downtown area can coexist and create that synergy.

ROBERT KEOUGH, COMMONWEALTH MAGAZINE EDITOR (MODERATOR): Kathy Bartolini, for Framingham, is this good news or bad news, suburban growth?

Kathleen Bartolini

KATHLEEN BARTOLINI, FRAMINGHAM PLANNING/ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR: It’s not a projection. It’s already been happening in Framingham, which is the twelfth largest community in Massachusetts although it’s a town. We are the fifth largest in contributions of corporate taxes to the state. I agree with a lot of what was said concerning ephemeral cities. I don’t see it as being anti-smart growth but as recognition of what’s happening. Maybe in Massachusetts we’re still parochial. We hear about these cities and tend to see Boston and then we talk about Quincy or Newton and we don’t see it as a region but as 351 municipalities. Framingham, why do they think they should be invited to the party? In fact, we are one of the major employers. If you look at us as an economic center while everyone is ignoring us, we need to think of Greater Boston as the city of Boston and how we can include the 101 communities in that region and look at the potential. We are already getting built out in Framingham. Only the northwest quadrant has any good amount of green land and we are not giving that to development. We are going to have to talk about density in the Golden Triangle, a retail area in Natick and Framingham. Those areas can accept more development. We do have water and sewer capacity. I believe in smart growth. The MWRA has sewer and water capacity out to 495. It’s not sprawl if you are building off of infrastructure that you are paying for. We have to define Boston like they do in California. San Diego is about half the size of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We think on a much different scale here in Massachusetts. I don’t have the answer to the limits of sprawl. Is it 495? Is it Worcester? We don’t define it. I don’t want it always to be New York and Boston and San Francisco and we need to prepare for that.

ROBERT KEOUGH, COMMONWEALTH MAGAZINE EDITOR (MODERATOR): Time to speak up for the environment Laura. Mass Audubon says we lose 40 acres of green land a day to development. If the trends of decentralized development continue, is it a matter of time before all of the state is housing and office parks?

Laura Johnson

LAURA JOHNSON, MASS AUDUBON SOCIETY PRESIDENT: There is a lot in Joel’s presentation that I agree with. A planner in Lincoln said you need to build what needs to be built and save what needs to be saved. It’s true today. The discussions we have today are variations on that theme. People who don’t label themselves environmentalists recognize the value of protected land and recognize that as community. Open space protections are very much expressions of community and can create community. I was interested to hear the many times you assigned value to open space protection in new and vibrant cities. One size does not fit all. Bird watchers are in conflict with mountain bikers. Ball fields are a big issue. Water quality and quantity, Ipswich River is drying up at times. That is a problem we are going to see even in water-rich Massachusetts more and more. We need to build resiliency in by having a mosaic of uses. The questions about substance of what needs to be saved and built are increasingly being answered. The issue becomes about tactics and I agree with smart growth principles and about zoning reform. The tactic you need to keep clear on is we can’t regulate all the uses and part of smart growth is smart conservation and it requires public and private investment.

ROBERT KEOUGH, COMMONWEALTH MAGAZINE EDITOR (MODERATOR): Back in the city, we have development of the seaport district, the first new neighborhood in a century. What does the plan tell us about what kind of city Boston is becoming? What about the call from the mayor for a new skyscraper?

KAIROS SHEN, BOSTON REDEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY PLANNING DIRECTOR: Obviously I support the mayor’s position. What we found with the planning and build-out is we are in a capitalist system where there is not centralized planning. The market is dictating how the waterfront is being built up. That’s the context. There is a historical precedent. I did not have time to check the Globe articles when the Prudential was proposed. It was probably how can we develop in the Back Bay when we have not figured out downtown? Since then we have built 45 million square feet. We have 45 million square feet planned for the waterfront and the downtown. We can see the opportunities more easily. It is really important – because we don’t own the land – that we have to have alternative visions for the city. I don’t think any of us could have predicted what the city looks like today or that any of us could predict what it will look like in 40 years. A city with commercial diversity does better than ones that are specialized. A city like Boston has to have alternate visions, the downtown and the waterfront can be different. Diversity and choices is key to the success. For the mayor to challenge the development community on what is possible is critical to the future of the city.

ROBERT KEOUGH, COMMONWEALTH MAGAZINE EDITOR (MODERATOR): Ed, you found regulation drives up the cost of suburban housing and one explanation for the rise in home prices is well educated individuals favor stricter zoning and land use regulation. Are we getting what we wanted?

EDWARD GLAESER, RAPPAPORT INSTITUTE DIRECTOR: Absolutely. Each community is doing what is in its own self-interest. Zoning boards are doing what residents want. What is in the interests of each community is not in the interest of the Commonwealth as a whole. It creates higher housing prices and social justice problems and makes it more difficult for employers to hire workers. I was sure we had to have more of a debate and that there was an economic lesson. You can’t be for affordable housing and against development. The number of people and the number of homes are basically the same thing. There is a reasonable view that we don’t want growth and we want Boston to be a boutique community. That is not my view. The laws of supply and demand are not open for appeal. If you restrict supply, you are going to have rising prices. The history and magic of this place is something to be protected. We don’t want to tear down every zoning rule, but we want to provide incentives to build more by providing local aid to communities that bring more units to market under local control. It’s clearly the way forward. I am a fan of 40R and 40S, though there are things I disagree with. I would like stronger incentives, but I don’t live in the political reality that makes the incentives more moderate. I believe in the ability of localities to figure out what works best for them. Tying incentives too much to affordable housing is also a mistake. We want more supply in general. I think of freedom, greater incentives. I will have to wear sunglasses to go back to Weston.

ROBERT KEOUGH, COMMONWEALTH MAGAZINE EDITOR (MODERATOR): Developers say they’d be glad to build housing, if only local officials would let them build it. Local officials say they would love commercial development to get property taxes, but developers say it’s impossible to site facilities because permitting is so costly and time intensive and unpredictable.

YOUNG K. PARK, BERKELEY INVESTMENTS PRESIDENT AND PRINCIPAL: If I had the answer I would be a far richer and wiser man. I will focus on the housing issue. We are involved in a project in the seaport. It was interesting to hear there was no central authority in Boston. We are doing a 100-unit project, extremely costly because we are renovating and adding three floors on top. The costs are extremely high and being in Boston we have layers of additional costs such as set-asides and rising construction costs. But there is an incredible demand for this type of unit. In Worcester, we are building 150 units in a new building and we face the same construction costs and rents and prices that are half of what they are in Boston. We are doing it by having the city create the infrastructure and pay for what happens under our building and make exceptions to building trade issues so we can build a building at a lesser cost. Even then we face enormous challenges because the market just isn’t there. Communities like Worcester are welcoming new development, but if the demand is not there how do you create affordable housing or high-end housing? We can only build what we can build, but that problem of creating new affordable housing; I don’t have an answer to that.

ROBERT KEOUGH, COMMONWEALTH MAGAZINE EDITOR (MODERATOR): Chapter 40R was one of the answers and 40S as well. There are incentives for mixed use in city and town centers. Kathy, you would think of Framingham as a perfect candidate, yet it’s not rushing to sign up, why?

KATHLEEN BARTOLINI, FRAMINGHAM PLANNING/ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR: I tried to convince Doug that we were the poster child for smart growth based on all the programs we did in 1999 with mixed use zoning, inclusionary zoning, being over 10 percent affordable housing. We had a developer do a small mixed-use project of 25 units. We have another project on an entire block that is 290 units with at least 20 percent affordability and 50,000 square feet of commercial space. That’s at a commuter rail station. We have permitted a plan for 650 units in another part of town. Neighboring communities took it to court and changed the special permit and it’s down to 525 with 10 percent affordable and more elderly units. We are doing what people wanted us to do before there were cash incentives. More housing, affordable or not, supply and demand means the price will adjust. So why are we not in the 40R game? There are so many reasons. Big daddy knows best. They say the units must be allowed by right, you can’t have special permit requirements, and you must have density of 20 units per acre. The densities we have to do are more than 20 units per acre. I went through a friendly 40B permit for 150 units of housing and we are still fighting. We are still in court. The abutters sued. In many cases, the communities are saying yes, but someone mentioned that the brilliant minds want tight zoning and they come to the hearings and tell us everything we do wrong. If we approve a project, they sue and bring a tighter zoning bylaw to Town Meeting. There is state review and approval under 40R. Municipalities are not moving on the home rule aspect of zoning. That’s when the fight really breaks out. I don’t recommend that anyone jump on board. They are not going to move on that point. I am a strategist. I like to play this game. We have zoned our downtown for mixed use. They are not going to give us money because we didn’t do it their way. That’s OK. You are asking us to prostitute ourselves for a few dollars. If we are going to be doing this, why don’t we talk about a little bit of tax-sharing. The big development gets into the larger cities and we are there to provide the open space and the residential units. Under 2 ½ that is not economically doable. We cannot be asked to provide services and not be given the dollars to do it. That’s one of the keys to doing this. I will get into 40R when I think it’s fairer.

ROBERT KEOUGH, COMMONWEALTH MAGAZINE EDITOR (MODERATOR): Laura, the pressure is going to continue on the countryside. The environmental community has criticized the administration for rationing back the rate of open space acquisition and underfunding maintenance and upkeep of parks and recreation facilities.

LAURA JOHNSON, MASS AUDUBON SOCIETY PRESIDENT: A recent multi-entity effort said that of the three million acres that remain, one million needs to be protected. It’s not a discretionary activity. So the state needs to continue to invest in partnership with municipalities and private non-profits. We have worked together really well to protect open space for multiple community purposes. The administration is increasing capital dollars available to protect open space. We need to invest the dollars we need to invest to protect our parks.

ROBERT KEOUGH, COMMONWEALTH MAGAZINE EDITOR (MODERATOR): Doug, you have been out of office a week. It’s not too soon to ask about your legacy. Nothing disappears faster than the last administration’s pet project. How do you protect it?

DOUG FOY, FORMER SECRETARY OF COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT: A lot of hard working people implemented that vision. I was one person that left. I have a lot of hope for that. There are remarkably talented people running the agencies. I trust they will continue forward. There are an extraordinary array of mayors and town leaders who are embracing these ideas and moving them forward in Somerville, Quincy, Northampton, Brockton, Springfield – they are going after these ideas with a vengeance. We have great towns and villages and wonderful second-tier cities. I think we have the bones to build on and those are not going away. We have 263 cities and towns participating in Commonwealth Capital. They have proposed hundreds of zoning changes to move toward a smarter future. That will continue. The other reason I am an optimist is most of us are Boomers. They have been pretty dominant throughout our lives. We are insisting on better choices of where we can live and how we choose to live. We are not satisfied with two-acre sprawling lots. I don’t want to clean my gutters anymore. We want to give my generation choices. We came here because we had great communities. We are embracing the notion of being able to reconstruct great communities. I am very optimistic. I can still toss ideas in and a few bombs here and there.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: What’s the situation with affordable housing in other cities?

JOEL KOTKIN, NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION IRVINE SENIOR FELLOW: Really nice places get expensive and lots of people want to be there. Some of it is planning. In some places it’s foreign capital. Prices are driven up by capital from people creating escape routes to cities that are globally attractive. Housing is built by people who don’t live there full-time. Miami is that way. We have smart yuppies in California. You can’t build in Santa Barbara or Ventura County. This restricts the supply. We have strong population growth so that adds to it. Every place has a different complexion of why prices are so high. Towns like Worcester are going to be where development takes place, places that want it. Very desirable places with part-time residents and foreign investment, it’s very difficult to see how you can reverse that.

EDWARD GLAESER, RAPPAPORT INSTITUTE DIRECTOR: To have high prices, you always need booming demand and restrictions on supply. Through the 60s, prices had looked pretty much like construction costs.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I wonder about how to fund the parks system, which is underfunded.

DOUG FOY, FORMER SECRETARY OF COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT: You can include it in your development strategy, some kind of linkage. You have to solve your health care problem to free up the capital. You are capital constrained in state government. There are enormous demands to repair the broken infrastructure. We found $1 billion in deferred maintenance for public housing, $1 billion for parks, $3 billion in MBTA, $2 billion in roads and bridges, and $1 billion or more in higher ed. And the state only spends a billion a year in capital. There are no simple answers to that. You have to suck it up and squeeze every ounce out of every capital dollar you spend. We can’t afford to waste them doing dumb things anymore. It’s simply unacceptable that our state park system is in the shape it is in today. We did more than four prior administrations, but that needs to continue.

KAIROS SHEN, BOSTON REDEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY PLANNING DIRECTOR: The newspaper today published a 100-acre master plan and on Saturday criticized a strategy for a park near the aquarium. Some of the burden of creating open space has to come from the private sector. There is still an expectation that public ownership and care leads to better open space. We cannot take that perspective because we will just get poorly funded and maintained open space.

KATHLEEN BARTOLINI, FRAMINGHAM PLANNING/ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR: We should be planning for the life of that 30-year-old. For us to be thinking from our 50-year-old perspective, maybe that 30-year-old is not ready for downsizing like us. The people at Little League games, I would like to bring them into the planning room to hear what they want. In the 70s I was trying to do fair share housing and people said we don’t want to move to Grafton or whatever. They didn’t want to even move from one side of Worcester to another, but to have where they live be a better place. I just may not have the right perspective. I have a 26-year-old and 24-year-old who went through the should-we-move-out-of-Massachusetts? They are still in my home so I don’t know if they are going to relocate. I suspect at least one of them will wind up in another state because the economy does not allow them to stay.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Do you see smart growth as connecting more closely where we get our food from and put our garbage?

DOUG FOY, FORMER SECRETARY OF COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT: Of course. The notion of a working landscape is particularly interesting in New England. In the west, the agricultural enterprises are in the central valleys. In New England, it is more moderately sized and compact farming and orchards. Part of a strategy of smart growth is saving what you have, keeping farmers in farming. That is all part of the agenda. Build where you can best build and save what you must save.

JOEL KOTKIN, NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION IRVINE SENIOR FELLOW: Two things struck me. The question of the 30-somethings is very accurate. This place has to live by its wits and not its climate. Demographics are showing that a good part of what used to come to Boston ten 20 years ago is now looking at other places. Competition with the Research Triangle is significant and how you address that issue is critical in the long term. That requires following the market a bit and building things that people want and sometimes when you build high densities think about the population that is going to bring in. My fear for Boston is it’s becoming an ephemeral city. You are not there yet. What kind of community is that as opposed to a city of neighborhoods and people who are there for a long time? The key thing is the commitment of people in Boston and Massachusetts to do something. You have enormous challenges, and great advantages. You will always get the very top here. But you need energy as much as genius. If you’re really only on the very high end you will end up with a sort of very distorted and bifurcated kind of society and economy and I don’t think that is where you want to go.