Preface
“This is one of those rare moments in our city’s life, a time when we have a chance to reinvent Boston and preserve the best of it for many years to come. And if we work together, there is nothing we can’t do!”
Mayor Thomas M. Menino, State of the City Address January 11, 2000
 
A Collaborative Civic Project
A Continuing Opportunity to Monitor Progress
 

Planning for the future has never been a strong point for Americans. Perhaps it is time for a change. The United Nations estimates that by 2025, nearly two-thirds of the Earth’s population, or five billion people, will live in cities. Sustainable, equitable solutions to the challenges of urban life will take center stage in the 21st century. Boston, although a small city, can lead the way.   Boston is America’s urban success story. It is also a city at a crossroads, never stronger economically but facing new challenges bred from that success. This report, Boston’s Indicators of Progress, Change, and Sustainability, is designed to guide change and to measure progress along the way. Boston College is committed to hosting a Boston Citizen Seminar every two years from the year 2000 through 2030, Boston’s 400th anniversary, to review progress and to set new civic goals.   In 2030, a young Bostonian who is fifteen years old in 2000 will be turning 45, the age at which he or she may move to the highest levels of civic leadership. A child born in 2000 may be raising a family of his or her own, and thinking about how to get involved in community life. By 2030, leaders in the year 2000 will have passed on their wisdom to younger men and women. The residents of Boston in 2030 will inherit the fruit of the choices we make today. The year 2000 in Boston represents an unprecedented opportunity.

Boston’s unemployment, crime and vacancy rates are all at record lows. Public confidence is high, and future projections are generally positive. In many ways, Boston is already close to becoming that elusive “city on a hill” — an urban center that offers the best of America’s promise to its residents, workers, and visitors. This is the result of decades of hard work in every sector and neighborhood, as well as a period of sustained economic expansion.
 
 
 
But Boston is also facing a number of challenges. As detailed in this report, Boston’s positive statistics on average mask a deeper reality. In the midst of generally rising prosperity, the cost of living has outpaced wages for many Bostonians and has created a negative economic undertow. Racial and class disparities in access to quality health care, schools, housing, technology, and transportation continue to reflect historic patterns of disadvantage which have not changed in proportion to Boston’s economic success. These realities, in an era of almost unparalleled growth, call for civic imagination and action.
 
In areas such as public safety, the environment, jobs, public health, cultural life, technology, and civic health, Boston has made great progress through innovative programs and the engagement of residents, with a deepening spirit of collaboration across sectors.
 
But questions remain for Boston in the year 2000:
• Can a city extend the benefits of economic success to all of its residents and neighborhoods?
• Can it retain a vibrant mix of income, ethnic and age diversity even as it attracts higher income residents?
• Can it create pathways to educational and economic success for all its young people?
 
The challenges outlined in this report are shared by many municipalities throughout the region: a shortage of affordable housing and rising cost of living; under-performing schools; insufficient training opportunities for jobs in the new economy; a shortage of skilled workers. Progress on these challenges will require statewide policies and regional collaboration. Many of these challenges are also shared by cities around the country and around the world.
 
Boston, with its wealth of social and intellectual capital, its cultural diversity, its environmental and other resources, may have what it takes to succeed. Some would go so far as to argue that if it can’t be done in Boston, it can’t be done.
 
This report is designed to help the people of Boston chart a wise course of action for the future. It allows us to “measure what we value and value what we measure” in ways that traditional reports do not. It brings together data from many sources and promotes a collaborative approach to analysis and action.
 
It also clarifies the interaction among the social, economic and environmental factors that influence outcomes in any one area. This allows for a comprehensive look at community life and for a more holistic approach to individual decisionmaking and public policy.
 
The Wisdom of Our Choices is designed:
 
• to provide information to assist with community planning and problem-solving;
• to help business, government, community, and civic leaders find effective points of intervention and collaboration;
• to build relationships across traditional boundaries: sectors, races, neighborhoods, generations, levels of government, and between Boston and its metropolitan neighbors;
• to tell the story of Boston’s successes and challenges in ways obscured by conventional measures, so that problems can be assessed within the context of our social, economic and environmental assets; and,
• to market Boston not only to newcomers but to Bostonians, who, with the help of the media, tend to see our glass as only half full when we compare ourselves with other cities and regions.