Roshan Sivaraman: My Summer with the City of Boston’s Office of Climate Resilience (Climate Ready Boston)
Roshan Sivaraman (CAS, CFA ’26) was the 2024 City of Boston Climate Ready Boston Intern.
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This summer, I had the privilege of working as a Summer Intern at the City of Boston’s Office of Climate Resilience (formerly known as Climate Ready Boston). Boston is such an exciting city in terms of environmentalism for so many reasons, and I am so proud to be working to improve Bostonians’ experience with the environment around them. I worked on two major projects, both of which concerned heat resilience and tactical urbanism, in essence, addressing and mitigating the effects of heat in urban space. The first project involved installing a shade structure and multipurpose community space in East Boston’s Day Square; in the second project, we installed green (“living”) roofs on 30 bus shelters along Bus Route 28, providing shade along one of the most highly-trafficked bus routes in the Boston area. Though similar on paper—both involved installing shade in urban heat islands, and both had significant environmental justice implications—they could not have been more different in practice. I learned so much this summer about how local government works, but both projects taught me things that I think apply at every level of governance, for better or for worse.
The environment is probably one of the most challenging things to govern, especially in an urban setting and especially in a city like Boston. There are few things that people will complain about more than traffic, whether the trains run on time or litter on the street because those are things we see every day. Take Day Square, for example. Day Square is a triangular intersection in East Boston with a number of lovely South and Central American restaurants and stores. In the summer, it was swelteringly hot; besides a few trees on a road island in the center, there was almost no shade. The square is located minutes from Logan International Airport and seconds from I-90, both of which make the space incredibly loud (especially when the Sumner Tunnel is closed, which it was for most of the summer). There are two narrow and strangely angled lanes on each of the streets surrounding the triangle, and a singular bus route services the area; together, traffic in Day Square is stagnant at best. For residents and visitors to Day Square, the problems were obvious–it needed some transit improvements, if not a total overhaul.
Enter the MBTA. This past spring, the MBTA released Plan: East Boston, which identified these problems and proposed an extension of the Silver Line route with a new bus station in the center of Day Square. What the MBTA did not do, however, was engage much with business owners and residents in Day Square itself—who would, ultimately, decide whether or not this bus station would be built in the first place. Note that Day Square is a very crowded space. There was simply no room to just “build a bus station” without taking something else away. To build the station, the MBTA would need to take away parking, 11 spaces, to be precise. It would then be the job of the City of Boston’s Transportation and Environment departments to convince local businesses that it was worth losing those 11 parking spaces to potentially gain hundreds of new customers via the new Silver Line route. Unbeknownst to the MBTA, those 11 parking spaces would become the crux of a weeks-long drama known as the Day Square Plaza, which—in a perfect world—would have been remembered as a thriving multipurpose space where community members could sit and enjoy the shade. Instead, it became a nuisance: Barely days would pass without hearing about it being vandalized, and it was subject to ridicule on the street and in the (English language) media. In response, the MBTA got cold feet on the Silver Line plan and backed off. What went wrong?
It might be helpful to compare the circumstances of Day Square to those we encountered while installing the bus shelters. The bus shelter living roofs project, in comparison, was a tremendously optimistic and positive experience, containing within it all of the best qualities of urban environmentalism. Together with our friends at YouthBuild, Weston Nurseries, and Social Impact Collective, the City of Boston set up the most extensive green roof project for the bus shelter in North America so far. Along the way, we had so many positive interactions with commuters, especially youth and seniors: previously, the bus shelters had clear roofs, making them poor protection from the sun. I remember one high school student along Malcolm X Boulevard told us, “You have no idea how much this means to us.” The project was also designed to improve pollinator biodiversity, and we would often see butterflies and honeybees frequenting the green roofs. Even the installation process—besides a few delays at the beginning—went smoothly. When installing the green roof panels, we would set up the truck on one side of the road and run across the street carrying a panel, allowing us to set up several bus shelters in a single afternoon. Trevor, our resident plant expert, once commented, “This project is so guerilla, it’s awesome.” All of these gave the project a tangible feeling of accomplishment, that we had contributed something meaningful to our urban environment and community.
In Day Square, on the other hand, the narrative quickly became polarized for the worse. On July 31, mere hours after the shade structure went up in the first place, CBS News ran the headline: “East Boston business owners upset entertainment space took over key parking spots.” In their article, they interviewed one particularly disgruntled business owner who had some very inflammatory things to say about the space. He was the only person they interviewed. As much as we wanted to, we weren’t able to push back on any of the barely-true things he had to say, allowing him to basically craft the narrative as he saw fit. Because he was the loudest and the angriest voice, his words would define the project, regardless of the facts at hand.
One of my responsibilities at City Hall this summer was to design the communications materials for the Day Square and green roofs projects, so I spent a lot of time looking at the City of Boston’s brand guidelines. To summarize, the general tone of City communications should be bold and optimistic but humble. The Day Square project aligned with those ideals, as rather than being fine with “just” a bus station, the project dared to envision something bigger and bolder. That audacity was its downfall. We had to strike a difficult balance between being bold and optimistic—building a multipurpose community space, using the words “urban renewal”—and being pragmatic, which in this case would be to address the immediate transit needs of the area. I learned the hard way that people often have a much harder time envisioning positive futures than they do identifying concrete problems, which became the challenge of “community engagement.” When we actually asked people what they wanted the space to look like, they would rarely give us a solid answer, instead preferring to tell us their complaints.
Allow me to make a sweeping generalization: it’s impossible to please everyone. This summer, I learned that lesson on a microscopic level. The Day Square Plaza was de-installed just before the beginning of the fall semester, to the relief of many and the disappointment of many others. The space was returned to its previous self—11 parking spots in all their glory. And the MBTA was now even more wishy-washy than before about whether they would actually go through with the Silver Line redesign. What began with us attempting to brazenly and radically transform this hostile space ended with us backing off, hanging our heads. But does that mean that we should never attempt to improve our surroundings? Was the Day Square Plaza a waste of time and resources? I don’t think so. I think even being exposed to the possibility of changing their community for the better was a step in the right direction for the residents of Day Square. The same is true about the bus shelter green roofs: We get so paralyzed by the possibility that not everyone will be happy with a situation that it forestalls action altogether. It sounds corny, but I genuinely mean it: Having the audacity to imagine that things can improve makes the biggest difference.
It was such a gratifying and empowering experience to be able to make a change in our city this summer, even if the projects turned out to have minds of their own. I obviously would not have been able to do any of it without the support and guidance of BU’s Initiative on Cities, as well as the very generous housing stipend, which made it possible for me to spend the summer in Boston in the first place. I would also like to thank Zoe Davis and Abby Menendez at City Hall for their mentorship. I always felt supported by the team and that there was never too much pressure on my shoulders, which was ideal when we were in a particularly sticky situation. Moving forward, I’d like to continue to inspire people to imagine better futures for their communities and their surroundings because even if things don’t quite work out, it’s always worth it just to plant that seed.