I brought a unique background to my internship with the City of Boston’s Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics (MONUM). My undergraduate degree from Northeastern University is in Game Design, and I worked as a games professor at Bunker Hill Community College for many years. I also ran testing sites and medical offices throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and now I’m earning my Master’s in Early Education at Boston University Wheelock. Education and public service have been the through lines of my career trajectory. However, I had never previously considered city government as a potential path forward.
When I began my fellowship with MONUM this summer, I entered without any real conception of how city governments function, or even what fell under the city’s purview. It was a steep learning curve, but not an unwelcome one. This year MONUM has been tackling permitting as a whole team. My project partner, Zoë Fahy, and I were given public realm permitting as our slice of the permitting pie. We were tasked with finding ways to simplify permitting for small-scale projects in a way that would activate our community and public spaces.
The first thing Zoë and I had to determine was: what is the “public realm?” This term came up a lot in the research we reviewed, but everyone seemed to have a different definition. We settled on five discrete topics that the public realm referred to: public art, sidewalk amenities, urban gardening, neighborhood cleanups, and events. Having this framework allowed us to look at how peer cities have tackled the problems of public realm permitting. We interviewed teams in San Francisco, Vancouver, and New York City and reviewed public realm permitting materials from cities like Los Angeles, Portland, Fayetteville, Washington, D.C., and many more.
Simultaneously with this peer city research, we interviewed internal stakeholders (like Boston’s Public Realm Manager, Nate Lash) and external stakeholders (like the city’s many Main Streets directors and members of the Downtown Boston Alliance). Their perspectives on the issue, coupled with what we learned from peer cities, really helped us narrow in on the problems that needed to be addressed.
The largest issue we identified is that Boston doesn’t currently have any small-scale installation permits. The only real way to make changes to the public realm in Boston is the Street Occupancy Permit. This permit is scaled for things like new apartment construction, adding bike lanes to a road, or redeveloping public land into green spaces. But for something like painting a street mural or placing planters on the sidewalk, there is no easy point of entry. The Street Occupancy Permit has many questions that are irrelevant for these small projects and comes with a prohibitive list of costs.
We also found that the city doesn’t have a unified way to steward the public spaces that do exist. Programs like Love Your Block or Adopt Green Infrastructure are wonderful resources, but there isn’t cross-communication between program owners or a central way to coordinate Bostonians’ volunteer efforts.
Zoë and I provided the city with several different ways in which they could tackle these issues. The long-term solution is going to have to be systemic change to reorganize how the city thinks about permitting as a whole. But as that isn’t an immediately addressable issue, we also developed some stopgap measures.
The first one, and the one with the catchiest name, was the Leave a Trace program. This program leverages the already existing Play Street Permit, which is used for block parties, and suggests that the city allow residents to use this permit as an avenue for painting temporary traffic-calming street murals during these block parties. This will promote community engagement as well as help the city make progress on its street safety goals. Our research found that this permit has already been used this way several times. The city simply needs to come to a consensus on what this process should look like.
Secondly, we suggested the city “tier” the Street Occupancy Permit. By this, we mean that the city should have separate entry points for public projects depending on the amount of risk the city is taking on. A new apartment building would still go through the current process, but placing a planter on the sidewalk would require less scrutiny and lower costs. This would save both residents and city employees time by allowing our permitting teams to focus solely on the projects that require their expertise.
Lastly, we suggested the city develop a Trusted Partner Program. This program would provide community organizations like Main Streets and Business Improvement Districts with permission to manage and activate their areas with pre-approved events. In turn, these organizations will formally take on the maintenance of these areas, including collecting litter, managing green spaces, and reporting infrastructure issues. The city already does this in an informal capacity with groups like the Downtown Boston Alliance. Like with the Leave a Trace program, we are suggesting that the city formalize these existing processes so that they are more readily accessible and equitable.
All of these suggestions and our research were shared at a large interdepartmental meeting during our last week. It was wonderful having an opportunity to bring together a large group to discuss these issues and try to identify directions forward. Conversations from our meeting continued for hours after we finished, and it was very rewarding to see that our hard work and enthusiasm had rubbed off on others.
While all of the work and career connections were wonderful, I also really want to highlight the intercollegiate benefits. My project partner Zoë is getting her Master’s at MIT in the Department of Urban Studies & Planning, and her insights and experience were a wonderful complement to my own. Alternating between casual banter and diligent research with her is something I won’t soon forget. We even took “Married in Boston” photos at City Hall on our last day.
Working with MONUM was an experience I didn’t expect to have, and it really helped me understand how and why cities function the way they do. I have a newfound respect for the work of all our municipal employees, and I am excited to maintain these relationships in the future.