For many, a city announcement to develop either an arts district or innovation district in a lower income community of color is code for gentrification. But in one neighborhood in Boston, a process is under way to develop an “arts and innovation” district with the explicit goal of not displacing lower income residents or locally-owned businesses. In the Upham’s Corner commercial district of Dorchester, plans are being drafted to revitalize a community theater, build a new public library branch, and support local entrepreneurs and artists. A robust community planning effort has brought together a diverse set of stakeholders and used creative arts-based methods to engage residents.
How might Upham’s Corner defy the already intense gentrification pressures in Boston, which could be further magnified by investing in the arts and innovation? The answer lies in who has ownership – of both the development process and the land. In Upham’s Corner, the process is co-led by a partnership between the City of Boston and the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI), a world-renowned community organization that was formed by residents in the mid-1980s to establish community control over development. DSNI has a community land trust that took ownership of a former bank building in Upham’s Corner, which is one of the redevelopment sites. The other sites are already owned by or being acquired by the City.
Known as the Upham’s Corner Implementation (UCI) process, this project is extraordinarily ambitious, compared to typical urban redevelopment. UCI is attempting to overcome a number of community development hurdles. Instead of fragmented site-by-site development, UCI hopes to capture the synergies possible in a multi-site redevelopment. Instead of reinforcing historical distrust and antagonism between City and communities, the process is being run jointly by City and DSNI, with a multi-stakeholder advisory group steering the development of the vision and assessing developer proposals. UCI hopes to attract developers that see themselves as a part of a long-term process to grow the district from within by supporting local entrepreneurs and artists.
Over the last two years, Tufts Department of Urban & Environmental Policy & Planning (UEP) and DSNI have been conducting action research to better understand how this process can strengthen community control over development.[1] From Fall 2017 to Fall 2019, an inclusive and robust process resulted in a set of draft request for proposals (RFPs) bundled into a multi-site development package. The release of the RFPs ran into legal delays within the City and is now delayed again by the COVID crisis. Despite these delays, there are many lessons to be gleaned for those who are committed to development without displacement, community control, and creative placemaking. Though there is a long way to go before the development vision is fully realized, the process is expanding the boundaries of possibility for community economic development.
Key learnings:
- This process builds on a strong civic infrastructure with a long history of “accumulated neighborhood power,” in the words of one DSNI staffer. Though the long-term partnership between City and DSNI of over thirty years laid a strong foundation, the partners had to navigate how to share facilitation and ensure the integrity of a community-driven process, such as deciding to take more time for community engagement.
- The fact that land is owned by a community entity has created a more equitable power dynamic between the City, community stakeholders, and developers. DSNI’s ownership of a former bank building allowed them to “own the table, not just have a seat at the table.”
- The community’s accumulated power even extends into city hall, where former DSNI Executive Director John Barros leads the City’s efforts as Boston’s Chief of Economic Development. The City is making a remarkable commitment to assembling land and investing public funds, as well as coordinating across five major City agencies or departments.
- A Working Advisory Group (WAG) representing major stakeholders was convened and took the time necessary to deliberate over and define what they meant by an arts and innovation district. This effective collaboration has led to WAG members feeling a “sense of ownership” over the process and a set of draft RFPs that embody the “energy in the vision”.
- The broader community was engaged through multiple modes, including creative, arts-based methods. In one particularly powerful moment earlier in the process, a theater group performed back to several hundred participants what they heard throughout the course of a community meeting, dramatizing the pain and challenges residents had experienced in the past with the City. One DSNI staffer thought that this play allowed residents to “see themselves, their stories reflected and now that builds trust and/or opens people up to be engaged.”
- WAG members and City staff are deepening their relationships, broadening their networks, breaking down silos within City and across the neighborhood. In short, civic infrastructure is continuing to grow broader and deeper.
- Though there is hope that this process may serve as a model for other parts of the City, there remain questions about the feasibility of the vision (particularly around affordable commercial space) and the long-term stewardship of the vision.
Background
Upham’s Corner, a multi-racial, mixed income area of Dorchester, has been described as one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the country.[2] With ~30,000 residents, the area’s median income and educational attainment are lower than that of Boston as a whole.[3] As a historical crossroads that was once a streetcar hub and still intersected by major roadways, Upham’s Corner includes all the racial and ethnic diversity of Boston, with 39% of residents being black, 26% Hispanic or Latino, 10% white, 3% Asian, and 22% other.[4] The district features historic and cultural sites such as the city-owned Strand Theater (built in 1918) and the Dorchester North Burying Ground which dates back to 1633. It has been a vibrant commercial area since Amos Upham opened a dry goods store in 1804.
Over the last 20 years, Upham’s Corner has been the subject of multiple planning studies, leading to it being highlighted as an “Enhanced Neighborhood Pilot” in the City of Boston’s comprehensive plan Imagine Boston 2030 (published in 2017). Plans were created to revitalize the Strand Theater (2004), conduct creative placemaking as part of the Fairmount Cultural Corridor (2012-2014), and develop a Dudley Square-Upham’s Corner Corridor Neighborhood Innovation District Plan (2015) focusing on technological and creative entrepreneurship. Transportation issues were analyzed in a walk to work study (2011) and an Upham’s Corner Station Area Plan (2014), which envisioned transit-oriented development around the Fairmount Indigo commuter rail line running through the district.
Significantly, not all of these planning initiatives were undertaken by government agencies; some were driven by community organizations, including DSNI. The Fairmount Cultural Corridor laid the groundwork for using the arts and other creative methods to engage residents and build their sense of belonging and ownership. The collective vision coming out of these efforts are summed up well in Imagine Boston 2030: “to strengthen the community’s historic main street fabric, enable economic mobility and local innovation, and support a vibrant arts and culture hub… [and] also preserve affordability and prevent displacement.”[5]
Imagine Boston 2030, the City’s first comprehensive plan in 50 years, was released in summer 2017 in Upham’s Corner, kicking off what is now called the Upham’s Corner Implementation (UCI) process. Jointly facilitated by the City and DSNI, this process has been guided by a Working Advisory Group (WAG), with about a dozen members appointed by the Mayor, representing various community stakeholders. Throughout the Fall of 2017 and into spring of 2019, the WAG convened a series of nine community meetings, involving hundreds of residents to refine the vision and shape the priorities into a set of requests for proposals (RFPs) for the various development sites.
One of the reasons many long-time community leaders were hopeful that this UCI process would lead to implementation (and not just another document sitting on a shelf) was that the City had committed $18 million to build a new public library branch and DSNI’s land trust had acquired a former bank building with a $1.7 million loan from the City. This is the largest commercial building in DSNI’s land trust portfolio and is now called the Dudley Neighbors Inc. Community Building (DNICB). Along with previous commitments to revitalize the Strand and redevelop a municipal parking lot, there are now multiple sites in play, hopefully allowing for more flexibility and resources to achieve development without displacement. Adding to the complexity of multi-site redevelopment is the fact that five City agencies are centrally involved through ownership and regulatory jurisdiction, including Office of Economic Development , Boston Planning and Development Agency (the usual lead for large redevelopment projects), Department of Neighborhood Development (lead for affordable housing), Office of Arts and Culture (which operates the Strand), and Boston Public Library.
Key Findings
Since Fall 2018, a Tufts UEP research team has been embedded with DSNI as participant-observers in the UCI process. We have compiled an archive of documents related to the current process and conducted 18 interviews with key stakeholders from summer 2019 to January 2020. We also worked with 10 youth in DSNI’s summer program in 2019 to develop and share their visions for development of DSNI’s community building. Based on this data, we have compiled some emerging themes and lessons learned from the process so far.
The long-term partnership between City and DSNI laid the foundation for the UCI process.
This partnership grows out of more than three decades of DSNI working with the City of Boston. In the early 1980s, DSNI was born out of opposition to City plans to redevelop their neighborhood. DSNI used community organizing to gain ownership of land by getting the City to delegate its eminent domain powers to DSNI in the late 1980s. DSNI now owns 30 acres of land through its community land trust (known as Dudley Neighbors, Inc), which it has developed into parks, a greenhouse, urban farms, and more than 226 units of permanently affordable housing.
For more than 30 years, the City has had to come to DSNI’s sustainable development committee to review plans for development within DSNI’s core area, leading to the building of enduring working relationships. This relationship between community and City is not the usual and has resulted in the community having a “sense of entitlement” in decisions over development, as described by one DSNI staffer. Residents expect to have a say, rather than having to ask for it.
Despite this long history, the City and DSNI had to renegotiate their relationship in order to co-facilitate the UCI process. At the beginning, the City had hoped for a much shorter time frame to draft RFPs and recruit developers, but DSNI pushed back to ensure enough time to run an authentic and meaningful community process. In the words of one DSNI staffer, the fact that their land trust owned one of the development sites and could take independent action for that site, gave DSNI more leverage and allowed them to “own the table, not just have a seat at the table.”
The role of specific leaders in DSNI and the City was cited by many interviewees as key to resolving tensions and coordinating the complex web of City agencies and community stakeholders. On the community side, DSNI had long-standing credibility to represent residents and exert community control over development. And there was strong agreement that this process would not have been able to happen the way it did without John Barros playing a key role. As a member of the Mayor’s cabinet, he could bring together all the agency heads on the City side. As a former DSNI Executive Director who was born and raised in the neighborhood, he had deep relationships and a high level of trust with community stakeholders.
The WAG took time to deliberate and develop a shared vision and set of draft RFPs and ensure accountability to the community process.
Much of the work of the WAG has gone into a series of community meetings to inform and refine a set of draft RFP documents. Though previous planning processes had developed an overall vision, the WAG had to translate that into the RFPs. What had first started as a more technical document meant for developers has, according to one City interviewee, become more “reader-friendly” so that it does not “read like an RFP”. This document now has more “energy in the vision” and uses “storytelling” to signal to developers that they are not just here to “build the building … and then walk away,” but that they “have to be part of the vision.”
The WAG took the time necessary early on to work through how this project was being framed. The City’s initial term – “arts innovation district” – created some confusion about what was being innovated (the arts or technology) and whether this district was about supporting local innovators and artists (or attracting them in). For some, the term signaled gentrification. In one meeting, one WAG member suggested reframing the term into “arts and innovation” district, which was broadly supported. Even if this subtle reframing only made a difference to the WAG, the deliberation over the meaning brought more clarity to the WAG’s desires to prioritize the diverse range of local artists and innovators who were already in the neighborhood.
Another key impact of the community process on the RFPs was the acknowledgement that the Strand Theater should remain a 1400 seat arena, rather than breaking up the space, which had some had assumed would be necessary to make operating the Strand more financially feasible.
Many WAG members lauded the process, and particularly City staff for their openness and facilitating a process that led to a “sense of ownership” by participants over the process. One WAG member appreciated City staff for their “incredible patience and their ability not to feel defensive.” Though there were sometimes challenges with timely sharing of documents, WAG members felt that there was always opportunity for deliberation and accountability to the community process.
WAG members noted the importance of their roles as representatives of broader constituencies. They felt a responsibility to reinforce what they heard at community meetings, as well as bring back key issues to discuss with their respective organizations and constituencies. Thus, one WAG member felt that community members had a “trusted body who [they felt] represented them.”
Given this commitment to inclusion, WAG members and City acknowledged that the process still did not have enough representation of youth, artists, and business owners (who were appointed but ended up not being able to participate as consistently). As the WAG enters the proposal review phase, there are plans to appoint more artists and business owners to ensure more comprehensive representation of stakeholders.
UCI has innovated creative and arts-based engagement methods.
UCI’s community engagement, guided by the DSNI-City partnership, has gone far beyond the City’s typical public participation methods. DSNI and key partners like Design Studio for Social Innovation (DS4SI) had already done years of creative placemaking work in the Fairmount Cultural Corridor. One of the goals of this creative placemaking is to help to build a sense of civic belonging, of residents feeling that the community is theirs.
Instead of just holding the standard meeting or charrette with a slide presentation followed by questions and comments, there were a variety of interactive and creative engagements. Pop-up events were held on the street and on playgrounds, and people were brought into the DSNI community building for tours. Participants used blocks to build their visions for Upham’s Corner. They were engaged by visual displays and 3D models to spark their imaginations. People posted stickie notes with their ideas and placed dots to vote on ideas that they liked. They responded to text polls. Importantly, these engagements were designed for people who may only have had 10 or 15 minutes of time.
In our work with DSNI youth in summer 2019, the youth developed their own ideas for the DSNI community building and then activated the space through temporary installations inviting people to interact with what it might be like in the future. For one afternoon, the youth repurposed the building into a bowling alley and arcade, zen garden, and movie theater/café for a group of adult participants.
Many interviewees referenced a community meeting early in the process that was a key turning point and set a tone for the community-driven nature of this process. Held at the Strand Theater in November 2017 to talk about future visions for the Strand, the meeting’s agenda was developed by DSNI and DS4SI. They enlisted Red Sage Playback Theater to help synthesize the discussions from the meeting “so it’s not just people reading off of a piece of paper,” according to one City staffer. These actors observed the meeting and at its conclusion performed a 10-minute skit dramatizing what they heard.
According to one DSNI staffer, “when they performed, you could hear a pin drop. It was so quiet and everybody was listening. All the City staff were there. We must’ve had at least 300 people there.” Community stakeholders noted how “powerful” the session was, as it gave voice to their frustrations and pain from past processes with the City. While some City staff reacted very negatively to the play, one DSNI staffer thought the play actually diffused tensions because of its cathartic power. Another DSNI staffer thought that the dramatization allowed residents to “see themselves, their stories reflected and now that builds trust and/or opens people up to be engaged.” For WAG members and other community participants, this meeting signaled that the UCI was not going to be the same as other City processes. For the City, it showed that DSNI and its partners could deliver in terms of getting people out and engaging them.
UCI partners are broadening their networks, deepening their relationships, learning new methods, and transforming themselves.
Interviewees from City agencies and community partners all mentioned how the UCI process has brought people together in new ways. According to one City interviewee, in all their years at City Hall, “this is probably the first time this has actually happened, where all of the City agencies have come together and said, ‘I’m not just going to deal in a silo.’” As a result, they have built relationships with other agencies that have been helpful for projects in other parts of the City.
Similarly, the community partners spoke of strengthening connections across the various neighborhoods, such as between the more middle class white areas (such as Jones Hill) with lower income communities of color (like the Dudley neighborhood). One WAG member thought it was “possible that the civic groups … may not know much about the other chunks.” So, bringing four neighborhood groups together allowed them to get to know one another better. One WAG member felt that they now have “expanded the set of players I can work with.”
Both City and community stakeholders noted learning not just more about the other players, but how to collaborate more effectively. The City started providing food and translation at its meetings, even in other neighborhoods beyond Upham’s Corner. One WAG member noted that they had adapted methods they had learned from UCI for facilitating other community meetings they were involved in.
Some WAG members also learned more about the City’s planning and development process, such as land leasing and understanding the technical jargon of RFPs. One City staffer thought that the community partners gained “more insight into why the sausage gets made the way that it does.” This same interviewee felt that this process is showing the City how it can more productively partner with a community entity like DSNI. A community interviewee said they learned that “you can’t walk into this saying ‘the City should do this, the City should do that’ … the reality of what is on the other side in City Hall [is] they don’t [always] know what to do.”
There are a number of questions that still need to be addressed as this process continues.
Many interviewees believed that it was still too early to judge whether UCI is successful or not, given the delays in the process. There is still much uncertainty over the feasibility of the UCI vision. Many have wondered about whether the goals are too ambitious for any developer to achieve. One City staffer asked “will anything viable come in” from developers? Though DSNI’s mantra is “anything’s possible,” one DSNI staffer asked, “how do we not settle?”
In particular, there are concerns that the desire for affordable commercial space to support local businesses is, in the words of one WAG member, “perhaps the weakest part of the RFP” because there are “no existing programs to help subsidize those types of uses, and new commercial spaces are very expensive to build,” in the words of another. There are also fears that no developer will be able to figure out how to make the Strand work successfully as a commercial enterprise, given that the cost to upkeep the “facility is insanely expensive” and that an operator may have to take “a financial risk for maybe 5+ yearsbefore they have an audience that’s coming enough for that to work for them,” according to one City staffer.
Another concern shared by many is that even if the development gets built to its fullest vision, it may not be enough to counter gentrification and displacement pressures. Several interviewees noted that real estate prices and rents have already been rising, even with no redevelopment and that there are no plans in place for residents who might be displaced.
Accountability to the community vision and process over the long term is another concern. Several WAG members were concerned about the capacity of the WAG to oversee the process and noted that they may need more support to meet more frequently and technical assistance to support their review of developer proposals.
Several other interviewees noted that DSNI’s and John Barros’ credibility and trust with community are at stake. One DSNI member worried, “I hope we don’t lose some of that cred, street cred.” A City staffer wondered that because the process is “leveraging or benefiting from the nonprofit’s trust, so if we don’t actually do the things we say we’d do, could that do more harm than good?”
Finally, there were concerns with accountability even after a developer is chosen and the construction is over. One WAG member asked “How do we sustain over time? 20 years, 30 years, 50 years” and ensure that the community vision is stewarded over the long term.
The City has been explicit that UCI is a pilot that they hope to replicate in other parts of Boston. There are two major challenges to replication. First, there are legal constraints that arose around the City’s land acquisition that still need to be worked out concerning fairness of the public process to private entities and coordination among City agencies. The hope is that in the future, these legal challenges can be dealt with ahead of time.
The second issue is the need for a DSNI-type partner in other neighborhoods. How does the City find or help support community partners who can play a similar role as DSNI? Though some interviewees were skeptical that such partners can be found in other neighborhoods, they all believed that there needed to be these types of community partners.
Finally, there is a tension between the amount of time and resources necessary to conduct a robust and genuine community process and the costs of extending the development timeframe. One City interviewee asked, how do you “engage people over a long period of time?” One WAG member noted that during a multi-year process “there’s gonna be a bunch of people who have moved in and a bunch of people who have left.” For DSNI, there are also additional financial costs to maintaining and holding their community building before development.
Conclusion
Conventional approaches to development can often lead to the seeming inevitability of gentrification. Arts-based and creative class theories of development have often been criticized as strategies for displacing lower income residents to pave the way for more wealthy ones. But we believe that in Upham’s Corner, the usual story has been disrupted by community ownership of land and collaborative control over the development process itself.
DSNI has been an example of community control over development since it launched its community land trust more than 30 years ago. Through ownership of a key redevelopment site in Upham’s Corner, it has been able to enter into a more equitable partnership with the City to develop a vision for an arts and innovation district, without displacement.
Resident engagement through creative placemaking and the arts, as well as more typical planning methods, has produced a vision that celebrates the diversity of Upham’s Corner and nurtures homegrown artists, creators, and innovators. The City has exerted leadership to bring together multiple departments, committed funding, and acquired land to help make this vision more possible. Whatever the next steps may bring, the decisions will be made collectively between the City, DSNI, and community stakeholders, and together they will navigate the uncertainties and choices ahead.
[1] This research is funded by the Office of Research and Evaluation at the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) under Grant No. 18REHMA001 through the Community Conversations research grant competition. Opinions or points of view expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of, or a position that is endorsed by, CNCS.
[2] City of Boston, 2017, Imagine Boston 2030: A Plan for the Future of Boston, p. 162. https://www.boston.gov/sites/default/files/embed/file/2018-06/imagine20boston202030_pages2.pdf
[3] Imagine Boston 2030, p. 162.
[4] City of Boston, April 2014, Fairmount Indigo Planning Initiative, Upham’s Corner Station Area Plan.
[5] Imagine Boston 2030, p. 161.