Tom Keane

Boston rising

After years of inactivity, ‘a renaissance on steroids’

EVER SINCE the 2008 market crash, the metaphor for Boston has been the gaping hole in Downtown Crossing where Filene’s once thrived: a figurative hollowing out of the city. Granted, developer Millennium Partners now hopes to build on the site, but that’s a ways off and so the metaphor still holds: Something, it seems, is fundamentally wrong with Boston.

Not at all.

Walk around the city and you’ll find other holes in the ground. These, however, are filled with cranes and workers. It’s easy to dismiss them as nothing more than anecdotal - tentative signs of an economic recovery the Federal Reserve still views as tepid. Yet while the Fed’s assessment may well be true for the rest of the country, the situation in Boston is different. In Boston, big things are happening.

The Boston Redevelopment Authority expects 62 major residential projects to be built within the next few years. A third of those are already under construction. Their total projected cost is an amazing $9.8 billion, a level of spending that far exceeds that of the last four years and indeed is well more than in the years that proceeded the recession. The BRA estimates all this new activity will directly create 14,000 construction-related jobs (technically, 14,000 “job years’’ - that is, jobs lasting 12 months) and at least an equal number of jobs indirectly. Once built, the new dwellings will house over 20,000 new residents.

The new residential projects are everywhere - 2,070 units in South Boston and its waterfront, 888 in the Fenway, 1,665 downtown, 1,132 in the South End - and they extend to neighborhoods outside of the city’s core, including West Roxbury (with three new developments), East Boston (five), and Allston-Brighton (four).

For four years the city’s economy seemed almost paralyzed. Now it is emphatically on the move. Those in the construction trades, most obviously, have reason to be delighted. But there’s much more to the resurgence of residential building than new jobs and new money. That resurgence also speaks profoundly to the next phase of Boston’s renaissance, a renaissance driven not just by office towers in business districts, but rather a rediscovery of the city by people who not only work there, but also want to live there. “It’s a renaissance on steroids,’’ says Peter Meade, the BRA’s head. Last quarter alone, he observes, Boston broke ground for 1,000 new units of housing. He’s excited, and for good reason.

There was a time when it appeared that urban areas such as Boston were doomed. From a population high of over 800,000 in 1950, Boston suffered a dramatic exodus to the suburbs. By 1980, it was down to under 563,000. Since then, things have slowly reversed, with the population now at 618,000. Pushed by the Menino administration’s relentless focus on matters of safety and “urban mechanics,’’ Boston regained its reputation as a livable city.

But the magnitude of the projects now underway suggests that those modest gains are about to accelerate. Boston still has an image for being a sleepy burg. Meade predicts the next few years will see the city transformed into one filled with activity 18 hours a day.

No doubt, some won’t be happy about this. The NIMBY crowd would just as soon see nothing change - no new buildings, no new residents. Too bad. Vibrant and successful cities need more people, not fewer. There are too many places in Boston where, technically urban or not, it feels underpopulated.

Of greater concern is the nature of the new developments, which - averaging two residents per unit - are plainly geared toward couples, not families. And the new units’ high costs leave nagging worries about those with more modest incomes.

Improve the schools and perhaps more families return. And while wealth is a concern, the converse - a city with only the poor - is far worse. A thriving middle- and upper-income population gives Boston a tax base from which it can better extend a helping hand to those in need.

In a world of virtual communications, some wonder whether cities have much of a future. Builders with money to spend are betting just the opposite. I’m with them. The prospects have never looked so good.

Originally published in the Boston Globe on March 24, 2012.

Forced speech on tobacco firms threatens free speech for all

FREE SPEECH has been in the news lately. In the wake of Rush Limbaugh calling a Georgetown law student a “slut,’’ the ubiquity of vile commentary has caught public attention. CNN contributor Roland Martin tweeting an anti-gay comment and liberal talk show host Bill Maher calling Sarah Palin a “dumb [expletive]’’ are just two more examples of a coarsening of political discourse that treats the ad hominem as argument and polarizes rather than illuminates.

Still, as offensive as it all may be, few would argue that there’s a role for legislation here. Most of us buy into the First Amendment to the Constitution - the one that says “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.’’ We may not like Limbaugh’s words, but it’s hardly up to Congress to prohibit him from saying them.

But how about the reverse? Instead of passing a law banning certain speech, could Congress pass one requiring Limbaugh affirmatively to say certain things? Could it, for example, require him (or Clear Channel, his employer) to broadcast a message that taxpayers should pay for contraception? Or force him to voice approval for removing prayer from school?

Don’t laugh. In a different circumstance, the feds are trying to do exactly that.

In this case, it’s tobacco companies and not Limbaugh who are the objects of the government’s ire. Admittedly, liberals everywhere despise cigarette makers even more than right-wing talk show hosts, so it’s hard to muster up a lot of sympathy. Yet the point of rules such as those outlined in the Constitution isn’t to protect those who are popular — in that case no protection would be needed — but rather to defend those who are on the outs.

A 2009 federal law gave the US Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco, including requiring that cigarette packages display graphic anti-smoking ads covering at least 50 percent of each pack. The new ads are compelling stuff. One shows a man with a tracheotomy, cigarette in hand and breathing smoke out through the hole in his neck. A second displays a grotesque set of diseased lungs; a third features a dead man’s body on a gurney, metal autopsy stitches running down his chest. They are designed to provoke an emotional response - revulsion, disgust, even nausea.

Unlike cute brown camels, these images are designed to persuade folks not to smoke.

Granted, Mitt Romney’s claims notwithstanding, corporations really aren’t people. First Amendment law has long recognized that commercial speech is different from regular speech, and so subject to some regulation. That’s why we have nutritional information on the foods we buy, for instance, and it’s the same argument that so far has allowed the government to require warnings (e.g., “Cigarette smoke contains carbon monoxide’’). But the new law, tobacco companies felt, went well beyond providing factual information to requiring them to become advocates - and, of course, advocates for an argument they clearly don’t want to make.

So, naturally, they sued and last week they won round one, with the District of Columbia federal district court blocking the FDA’s rules. The decision was unequivocal. Forcing someone - even a company - to say something is little different from prohibiting people from speaking, wrote Judge Richard Leon. “For corporations as for individuals, the choice to speak includes within it the choice of what not to say,’’ he noted. The FDA has appealed and don’t be surprised to see this one eventually end up at the Supreme Court.

Personally, I think the FDA’s ads are a tactical mistake. Their scary luridness is so over-the-top that they risk backfiring, making smoking seem a cool way for teens to rebel - and smoking by kids has largely been the motive for the new rules.

But whether the ads are effective or not, Leon’s decision was the right one. We’re a nation of rules, and not exceptions. Giving government the power to compel tobacco firms to advocate a message also gives it the power to compel others to do the same. Maybe that wouldn’t bother you if the next target was Rush Limbaugh. But just suppose — after, say, Rick Santorum’s inauguration — it was Rachel Maddow and MSNBC, now obliged to proclaim the contraceptive merit of an aspirin between the knees.

Originally published in the Boston Globe on March 10, 2012.