Activating Columbia Road: Reframing a Missing Link

agencies. For example, in 2019, planning processes
are underway for Franklin Park, Moakley Park,
and Upham’s Corner – all adjacent to Columbia
Road. Although these processes are managed
by different entities (Parks and Recreation and
the Boston Planning and Development Agency),
they must take into account areas of overlap
and efficiency. When the Columbia Road
project officially begins, the Boston Transportation
Department must similarly work to communicate
with these adjacent developments.
Within a single planning process, there is also the
difficulty of communicating and coordinating
with multiple city agencies, such as the Public
Works Department (PWD), Boston Bikes, and the
Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA).
The Columbia Road corridor will require special
attention to this challenge, due to its length and
mixed-use nature. The Boston Complete Streets
guidelines provide excellent resources outlining
public agency fiduciary responsibilities and where
they intersect. 1
Community Engagement
Community engagement has also emerged as a
major theme of our analysis. While engagement
strategies varied widely among the planning
projects described in the primary documents
and case studies, processes were generally
multifaceted. Within specific planning processes,
engagement strategies often included a design
component, such as a charrette or visioning
process, an active, event-based component, such
as a neighborhood bike ride or pop-up event, and
an online component, such as a portal or question
campaign. We have observed that a multifaceted
engagement strategy encourages involvement
by many parties; for example, design professionals
can contribute their expertise through more formal
charrettes, neighborhood residents are engaged
through site-specific, pop-up events, and residents
unable to engage in person can contribute
through online portals. It is important for planning
processes to devise a community engagement
strategy that includes several different avenues for
engagement, so as to involve as many people as
possible in ways that are most comfortable and
available to them.
1 City of Boston and Boston Transportation Department, “Boston
Complete Streets: Design Guidelines,” 250.
Communications and marketing surrounding
the engagement process are just as, if not more,
important than the engagement processes
themselves. Events, portals, and contact
information must be made widely available to
residents affected by planning processes. In our
analysis, creative advertising appeared to be
especially effective, such as with the Go Boston
2030 Ideas on the Street pop-up, transported via
cargo bike. Communication must also be made
accessible to the linguistically isolated communities
of greater Boston. It is imperative that materials be
produced in multiple languages and tailored to
the neighborhoods in which they are distributed.
This has not always been prioritized in past planning
processes, which has led to limited engagement
from certain communities.
In some instances, community members and
leaders have been given the opportunity to lead
engagement processes from within the community.
This strategy can produce effective results by
engaging more people simply via neighborhood
connections, rather than by forced participation.
The Design Studio for Social Intervention has many
good examples of ways to do this. 2 Similarly,
engagement processes that call on specific
resident groups to participate, such as business
owners or local organization members, can tap into
knowledge that top-down processes may not be
able to.
When it comes to Columbia Road, it has become
clear that past planning processes did not engage
with residents along the corridor at a deep enough
level. Particularly at the early stages, when the
project was first resurfacing, the planning process
was very top-down. After a while, it appears that
the project sometimes lost sight of who it was really
meant to impact and why it was necessary. As
it progressed through larger city efforts, residents
were brought in on a larger scale, but still not at
the scale necessary to garner widespread buy-in
and advocacy. Engagement efforts focused on
particular nodes, such as Upham’s Corner, or the
intersection with Blue Hill Avenue, but not often on
a corridor-wide level.
2 Design Studio for Social Intervention, “Civic Engagement.”
98 Activating Columbia Road: Reframing a Missing Link