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Related programs & projects | Recent publications | Archives | Index of related articles in Report Recognizing the importance and interdisciplinary nature of real estate development for all major urban regions, the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, the Taubman Center, and faculty members affiliated with both entities have undertaken many projects studying the politics, economics, and implementation of the forces and policies that shape the physical structure of urban regions.
Reinventing Urban America: Lessons from Boston Power Plays: Dispelling the Myth of Home Rule The ABCs of Business Leadership Sprawl, Politics, and Civic Engagement How the Supreme Court Preserved Planning Sprawl and Minority Suburbanization
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Over the past 400 years Bostonians have periodically had to reinvent the region’s economy, most recently after World War II, when manufacturing jobs left the region. In "Reinventing Boston, 1640–2003," Edward L. Glaeser, a Taubman faculty affiliate who becomes co-director of the Taubman Center on July 1, investigates Boston’s remarkable record of rebirth. He traces how in the early 19th century Boston transformed itself into a seafaring capital, then in the late 19th century became a factory town built on Brahmin capital and immigrant labor, and in the late 20th century developed into a hub of the information economy. A willingness to innovate, economic diversity, and rich human capital provided the secret to Boston's metamorphosis at critical junctures, he maintains, suggesting lessons for cities everywhere. The paper, published by the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, is part of a larger research project on the economic history of American cities.
Local officials in Massachusetts regularly invoke "home rule"—the legal power each locality has to direct its own destiny—as the reason they cannot solve problems that transcend municipal boundaries, such as traffic congestion and affordable housing. But in a new study recently published by the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, Harvard law professors David J. Barron and Gerald E. Frug, who are also Taubman faculty affiliates, and law student Rick T. Su dispute that view. Drawing on interviews with officials in 101 Massachusetts towns and cities, they show that in fact localities have little discretion over taxes, fees, and borrowing, and only fragmented control over public schools. Meanwhile the state imposes numerous unfunded mandates and may overrule local decisions at any time. The true obstacle to regionalism, these authors contend, may not be too much home rule but too little. Barron and Frug are following up on this report with a Rappaport/Taubman study comparing Boston’s powers with those of other large U.S. cities.
The success of the Artery Business Committee—a group formed by the CEOs of major Boston employers and property owners to ensure that the city functioned during the decade-long Big Dig project and was well-served by the finished project—offers important lessons about the future of business leadership in local affairs, according to David Luberoff, who recently left his job as associate director of the Taubman Center to become executive director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston. In a working paper published by the Rappaport Institute, Luberoff describes the people and motives driving the creation of ABC, analyzes the reasons for its success, and speculates on the lessons its record offers for civic leadership at a time when many once locally owned entities are becoming part of multinational firms.