Inspired in significant part by Edward Bellamy’s best-selling, late 19th- century book Looking Backward 2000–1887, we decided to try to imagine “A People’s Boston” in 2050. Accordingly, while writing what became A People’s Guide to Greater Boston1, we composed an essay that we entitled “Looking Forward, Looking Backward: Greater Boston in 2050.” The intention was to have it as an epilogue to our book.
The editorial board and our editors at the University of California Press did not share our view regarding the wisdom of including the essay. The proverbial nail in the coffin came from an external reviewer of the revised (second) version of the full book manuscript. The reviewer enthusiastically recommended publication, calling the book “simply terrific.” But the reviewer did not want “Looking Forward, Looking Backward” to be part of the published work, characterizing the essay as “jarring, inappropriate, and at odds with the rest of the manuscript.” After sitting on the essay in the years since we finalized it (in 2019) and the book was published in 2020, we’ve decided to share it with the world. No doubt the essay would be somewhat different were we to write it today given that all that has transpired in the last five years or so. Regardless, we invite you to peruse the essay, grapple with its ideas, and to share yours (not least your disagreements and alternative visions) with us.
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It was a tough semester for Genesis, the first one of her senior year at UMass Chelsea. She had worked hard throughout her college years. She was fortunate to have secured a job after graduating from Chelsea High – one she held on to throughout her time at the university.
She didn’t have to work to pay for school – it was free as it had been for at least a decade since the Solidarity Reforms had kicked in – but she believed strongly in environmental justice organizing and, well, there was a greater need than ever for work on the ecological adaptation front. Hurricane Charley, as the latest manifestation of intensifying climate change, proved that.
Charley almost prevented Genesis from completing college. She was so excited to have been accepted at UMass Boston, only to see the campus and Columbia Point as a whole made uninhabitable by the destruction wrought by the hurricane and the resulting flooding during her first year of classes. (They used to characterize floods of that scale “500-year floods.” But with three of them in the last 20 years, such a characterization proved to be outdated to say the least.) In retrospect, the mild flood-control measures authorities in Greater Boston had put into place in the face of rising sea levels seemed like a cruel joke.
It took a couple of years, but the University of Massachusetts was able to open up a new campus – much more modest than its predecessor, but certainly adequate – in Chelsea Heights. It’s definitely not as fancy as UMass Cambridge (a combination of what used to be Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT), but just as good. The choice of the Chelsea highlands was one of luck – the old Veterans Administration hospital provided a lot of space for thousands of students – and of necessity. Flooding had deluged the low-lying areas of the historically working-class city, just as the scien- tific models had made clear was a distinct possibility.
For her senior project, Genesis had decided to look into what had gone wrong, how, in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence warning of coming dangers, Boston and its environs were so unprepared for what happened. She decided to study the first few decades of what was once called the new millennium. Two things struck her.
First, while local elites consistently paid homage to all things “green”– especially “green energy” (as if the problem were only one of the energy source, not the use of so much energy and, with it, the rapacious consumption of environmental resources) – their practices and policies were, with rare exception, anything but. Take Boston’s Seaport neighborhood, the high-rent area which became synonymous with “innovation” of the vacuous profiteering, corporate-tech sort. Well known to be ground zero for rising sea levels, what many referred to it as the “inundation district” or the “flood district” saw endless development in the form of new high-rises – all approved and celebrated by city officials – as the predictions for what climate change had in store for Boston became ever-more dire. Buried in concrete and with poor public transit, the wealthy, high-consumption area was responsible for a disproportionate share of Boston’s CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions, while proving to be utterly incapable of withstand- ing the forces unleashed by climate change. (So much for innovation!) Second, to the extent officials took seriously climate change, among other challenges on the environmental front, what was so remarkable was the unambitious nature of the measures they took in response, how impoverished their vision was. The Climate Change Greater Boston initiative, launched with great fanfare in 2030, ultimately offered little, for example. More small parks, some localized flood control measures, a few trees here and there, but nothing that could even remotely be considered transformational.
When one did see vision and ambition, it was around projects championed by capital and efforts aimed at “security” – often in light of the dissent such projects unleashed. One example is the ill- advised Greater Boston 2038, a pathetic attempt to bring the Summer Olympics and its millions of tons of carbon emissions to the region. And then there was the effort to court Oceanic, the Berlin-based entertainment and telecommunications behemoth, to locate its second “world headquarters” in Greater Boston. Championed by Boston’s mayor, many other local leaders, and business elites – despite deep and widespread opposition among local denizens – it involved competing for the favor of the predatory capitalist enterprise. It was neoliberalism’s version of the Olympics, one involving all sorts of corporate giveaways in the name of attracting high-tech jobs of which local elites had become so enamored. In comparison to the modest measures were implementing at the time in the fight against intensifying climate change, the City of Boston promised the sky – billion-dollar projects involving expansion of and big improvements to the public transit infrastructure, for instance – things that should have happened anyway, long before the Oceanic circus began.
In the last couple of decades, much of East Boston, where Oceanic was slated to locate had Boston won its bid – thankfully the city “lost”– has been reclaimed by nature, admittedly a heavily engineered one. Logan Airport, which had devoured two-thirds of the neighborhood, no longer exists. Most of it has been replaced with wetlands, serving as a beautiful ecological preserve and a barrier to the rising sea. Flights now take place only out of Hanscom Field (next to what used to be Hanscom Air Force Base, which, in part thanks to the broad demilitarization of the region, has been reforested to compensate, if only partially, for the climate impacts of the airport), about twenty miles west of Downtown Boston. The airport is small, but that’s all that is needed as flights are now rare; they are limited to emergencies – humanitarian aid flights to and from abroad, for example – as carbon emissions and fossil fuel, like all precious resources, are allocated by strict rationing. Of course, rationing existed before, but it was dictated by the ability to pay (the so-called free market) not by the demands of atmospheric physics, socio-ecological needs, or by a sense of justice. It’s not that people no longer travel long distances, but if and when they do, it’s an uncommon occurrence, one involving low-energy forms of transport (like ships and trains) and slow travel, something many have learned to enjoy.
Perhaps the most palpable manifestations of the changes are the fact that the air is a lot cleaner – a right to clean air (and water) are basic human rights now taken seriously – and it’s quieter. No more gas-powered leaf blowers, lawnmowers or snow blowers. People have also rediscovered the wisdom of air-drying clothes. Clotheslines and drying racks are no longer considered “ghetto,” but simply a smart thing to do. More importantly, there are a lot fewer cars and trucks. Coupled with rationing, this means that idling vehicles are a thing of the past. (Remember how unpleasant it was to walk down city streets and you were compelled to breathe the toxins emitted by drivers while they used their cell phones, or ran their engines to use their vehicles as personal climate control capsules?) Private auto- mobiles are rare, in fact.
People walk and ride bikes a lot more as a result. This does not only mean that people are generally healthier – which is also a result of the fact that healthcare (as well as health) is a basic right, one protected by a range of institutions. It also means that they interact with their neigh- bors more. Thankfully, bike lanes and bicycle-dedicated streets are everywhere. Beyond one’s neighborhood, while many like to bike good distances, public transit is the way most people get around now. The public transit is dramatically better than it used to be, especially in terms of buses – at least that’s what Genesis hears from her mother and “old timers” in the neighborhood. Public transit is also now free. No longer do perverse incentives exist that encourage private transport over public. Buses run frequently and quickly, with dedicated lanes the norm on all major streets. With so few cars on the road, it’s easy to do. In the case of both the subway system and com- muter rail, there are new stations and lines, part of a system that is web- like so not everything goes to and from downtown Boston, allowing people in outlying areas to connect with one another easily. And for the elderly and the infirm, there’s a really good flexible public transit system. You can order a collective vehicle – there are many stationed in each neighborhood – by phone or computer and they typically arrive within minutes. For short distances, there are pedicabs.
As for water, that’s an ongoing challenge, but what’s exciting is how much things have changed for the better. People can now swim in the Charles River, for instance. While many things explain the broad improvement in water quality, one factor is the dramatic shift in what MIT now does. As part of a public institution, its primary mission is now a social and environmental one. (Gone are the days when so much of its work was dedicated to aiding corporate and military interests.) Meanwhile, the dynamic relationships that exist between the university and community groups have allowed for exciting collaborations and the development of technologies appropriate to the scale of neighborhoods and municipalities. Water issues are addressed locally – in terms of rainwater collection and the reuse of gray water, for instance, and neighborhood flood control measures – as communities now have a much more organic relationship to the life-giving substance than in the recent past. Water matters are also addressed regionally so that there is greater equity in terms of quality, access, and infrastructure.
One reason is the regionalization of government (Greater Boston is now a polity, one that has involved breaking down the hard political boundaries that relied on and helped sustain large socio-economic dis- parities between different entities – Lawrence and Andover, for example, and Mattapan and Milton.) Because of this, among other out- comes, public schools are now financed through a regional funding system, with historically deprived areas receiving extra levels of support. Combined with a de-emphasizing of standardized testing and the allowing for great flexibility in terms of approaches and curri- cula, it means that all children receive high-quality education. At the same time, public education is multigenerational, available to people of all ages as well as backgrounds, and accessible at a wide array of sites.
Such outcomes grew out of an important social movement in the 2020s that saw many among the “99 percent” in the area’s cities and suburbs come together to transcend identity-based differences and find common ground on “bread and butter” issues. This is what led to the Solidarity Reforms. This is not to say that inequality is a thing of the past, but it’s certainly far from what it was. More accountable forms of government, facilitated by participatory budgeting by which communities have a big say in how public monies are allocated and what types of development take place, has meant that the state is much less led by what elites want and more by what emerges out of democratic discussion and debate. (One manifestation is the resurrection of what were called in Boston in the 1970s “little city halls”– neighborhood outposts of government that allow community folks to talk to local officials on a regular basis.)
Of course, due to climate change, the average temperature in Greater Boston is markedly higher than it was in the early 2000s. That was when Genesis’s family moved from Honduras. (What an irony: they moved from what was, at the time, one of the world’s countries most detrimentally impacted by climate change to the one with the greatest historical responsibility for the carbon dioxide emissions that fuel a warming climate.) But the urban heat island effect is much less intense than was the case not too long ago. For one, there are far more trees thanks to state-supported, community-based efforts to plant street trees and to make urban forests and orchards. (An obvious benefit is that people have much greater access to fruits and berries when they are in season, and bird life is vibrant as well.) The digging up of a lot of pavement has also helped greatly. They’ve gotten rid of most parking lots, for example, and eyesores like Boston’s City Hall Plaza, turning it into a beautiful community garden and neighborhood composting space; they’ve also redesigned a lot of sidewalks and side streets so that they are not made of heat- absorbing and –emitting concrete or asphalt, but of crushed stones. As a result, many streets are now social spaces, where neighbors hang out, meet, and sometimes have meals together. And children have great play spaces. Moreover, large sections of what used to be highways are now linear parks, connecting people and communities through corridors not dominated by asphalt but passages that are enjoyable to traverse.
On an individual or household basis, people don’t have as much stuff as they used to – and that’s a good thing. One problem with the old economy was that it produced an endless stream of things to buy (much of it admittedly junk) and a lot of trash. Greater Bostonians re-use much more now and, in most cases, have gotten rid of single- use plastic – the throw-away shopping bags that you’d get from the store (what some labeled “urban tumbleweeds”) no matter how small an item you bought, for instance, plastic cups, straws, bottles, food containers, and utensils are all passé.
What we’ve become a lot better at is sharing what we do have, and producing and consuming only what we need – as opposed to want (or what advertisers and keeping-up-with-the-Joneses-like social pres- sures enticed us to desire). There are tool-lending libraries, for example, and time banks, through which people trade services with one another, thus creating economic activity within communities and providing opportunities. The number of cooperatively-owned businesses – owned by the workers themselves, the people who buy their goods and services, or by community groups and organizations – has exploded. This has helped to keep money in the local economy, while ensuring that excess revenues are invested as part of a larger social mission (rather than one of narrow profit). Every neighborhood has a food co-op now, sometimes several. In the same spirit, community-owned banks are the new rage. Urban farms, which are a great tool for learning and teaching about our relationships to soil, water, insects, etc., also proliferate. As part of the solidarity economy, new (and, in some ways, old) technologies of security have arisen to help people with the basics of one’s later years – retirement, funerals, and burial, for example. And “old” businesses have re-emerged – like shoe cobblers, tailors, and repair shops – helping us to give much longer lives to what we do have.
While everyone has benefitted from these changes, the greatest improvements have probably come to what used to be called undocumented or “illegal” immigrants. The backbone of much of the area’s economy, these illegalized noncitizens performed a lot of the most arduous and dangerous work – and with really low pay – and were always at risk of arrest and deportation.
This state terror really came to the fore during the years of the Donald Trump administration. The silver lining was that the violence of the “Homeland Security” state became much more obvious to people of good will, many of whom had said little in protest as Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, did many of the same things – but with a smile. Recalling the efforts by Greater Boston’s 19th century abolitionists, those lacking citizenship rights and their allies organized to rid society of the logic that justified granting people differ- ent rights and protections simply on the basis of distinctions of blood and birthplace, and of the associated practices. (This, along with the fact that the budget of the Department of Homeland Security [DHS] has been markedly reduced, explains why local efforts were successful in expelling ICE and DHS from the region.) In Genesis’s Greater Boston, such distinctions no longer matter – particularly in the political realm. All who make the city their home are citizens, have a right to vote, and to participate fully in civic life.
This speaks to how the great transformation that the region has undergone did not arise simply out of climate change. More importantly, it resulted from a multifaceted rebellion against the massive inequality along axes of race, class, citizenship and location that charac- terized Greater Boston of the new millennium.
There were lots of ways such savage inequalities were maintained or challenged. A key one was housing. Treating the places where we live as a commodity had upsides – at least for those who own housing in a growing market. For those who didn’t own, they were subject to the vagaries of the housing market or the whims of the land- lord. And for those who did own property – if their income was limited, unstable, or the terms of their loans unfavorable – they were always at risk of losing what little they had, particularly in the face of gentrification. Inspired by the efforts of those who fought evictions, defended tenant rights, and promoted alternative forms of ownership, people throughout the area organized to make the “right to the city” a reality by democratizing control over housing and land. Community land trusts – there is now a strong consortium of them for all of Greater Boston – co-housing, and other forms of collective ownership and control have made a huge difference in helping to stabilize communities and people’s lives.
So, too, have marked increases in the wages that people at the lower reaches of the economic pyramid receive. The minimum wage is now permanently tied to the living wage – what one needs to have a life that is full and secure – and increases with the rate of inflation. And there’s also a maximum wage. A lot of people didn’t like that when it was first proposed, and some of them have fled the region. (The flooding of the Back Bay, the Seaport and much of Boston’s water- front and some high-end towns along the North and South Shores was also an important factor in pushing many of the wealthier folks elsewhere.)
While critics of a maximum wage argued that it would prevent people from innovating, that turned out not to be true. For those whose life goal was to make more money, yes, they have less of an incentive to invent. But, really, what good were most of their innovations anyway? How many new apps, for instance, do we need? What was so great about the misnamed “share economy” – a thinly veiled attempt to boost profits for the so-called creative class and drive down the wages of working people in the process? The fact is that people always innovate – think about musicians, for example, or social justice activists. They’re always trying to figure out ways to make something new, better, or beautiful. In the pre-solidarity days, such innovation was discouraged to the extent that it did not grow the bottom line, and especially if it challenged the status quo in a serious way. Today, there’s a lot more space to innovate, to be different – in large part because people are more socially and economically secure. Meanwhile, people also have more time to be creative as the work week has been reduced to 32 hours. This, coupled with the federal implementation of a Green New Deal, one much more far-reaching than was proposed during the painful Trump years – with Greater Boston’s version even more ambitious – has helped to create employ- ment opportunities for the previously under- or unemployed. It has also allowed people the time needed to participate in a political process that is radically democratic.
All this facilitates streets and communities – and a city – that are much more dynamic and just than they were when Genesis’s parents first arrived. People support, care, and watch out for one another. Music and visual arts thrive – with murals and public art everywhere – woven into the fabric of each neighborhood. Greater Boston is also a city where nature flourishes.
It’s a place of the people.
1. Joseph Nevins, Suren Moodliar, and Eleni Mackrakis, A People’s Guide to Greater Boston (University of California Press, 2020).
