As students in BU MET’s City Planning & Urban Affairs (CPUA) programs know, a city is like a living organism—there are some signs that reveal themselves when it is healthy and others that manifest when it’s under duress. James O’Connell, a part-time lecturer in the CPUA program, has been observing and researching the Massachusetts region’s economy for decades, culminating with his recent publication of Boston and the Making of a Global City. He recently spoke with MassLive about his book and shared a series of informed observations about Boston’s economy and outlook, as companies, organizations, and universities navigate a landscape where federal research funding is in free-fall.
“[Y]ou’ve got the cuts in the research funding, whether it’s at the university level, hospital level or the private-industry level, like Moderna losing a $600 million contract to develop [an] avian flu vaccine. That’s really, really tough,” O’Connell said.
Boston’s number one issue, according to O’Connell, is lack of affordable housing.
“We’ve got what so many other cities want. We have the ecosystem of research and development, finance, venture capital, the patent attorneys, the advocacy organizations like MassBio,” he explained. “We’ve got all that in place, and that’s what the rest of the world wants. But it’s so expensive to live here. The cost of housing, I would say, is the biggest single detriment. That’s why people are leaving.”
But while the housing scarcity issue can only be resolved by increasing residential density, O’Connell says there remain obstacles.
“I know a lot of people in suburban towns around Greater Boston—we don’t want to change the character of our community and allow in some apartment buildings. But that’s the engine that makes it go. We’re trying to do it, but it’s hard,” he said.
In his book, O’Connell explores the city of Boston’s rise as a globally respected metropolitan area. But, he says, there are structural impediments to making Boston a truly “world-class” city: namely, the city’s transit system.
“The subway is problematic. It’s 125 years old. It hadn’t been maintained,” O’Connell said, suggesting recently installed MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng has found success bringing more reliability to the rails. “The buses seem to be working okay. They can improve. It’s the commuter rail system which really works pretty well. The trains are on time. Ridership is almost back, at least three or four days a week, to what it had been before COVID.”
BU MET CPUA students, both in the MS in City Planning and the MS in Urban Affairs as well as the BS in Urban Affairs, gain practical, real-world skills that focus on the ways sustainability, equity, and innovation can be leveraged to shape better cities and communities.
Read more at MassLive.