by Carrie Platusich
Carrie Platusich
For the first time in two decades, a new year in Boston includes a new mayor in City Hall. Twenty years is a pretty significant chunk of time to hold the reins of a city, and Mayor Menino left office with a unique legacy as a result. The city, its administration, and its inhabitants were faced with a series of challenges and opportunities – economic cycles, population growth ratios, transportation projects, gentrification that have led to the Boston that stands today.
Let’s review a few items that had a significant impact and will continue to play a part in the city’s evolution.
1. Welcome Back – After three decades of population decline precipitated by the nationwide flight to the suburbs in the 60’s, people started migrating back into Boston in the 1990’s, and we’ve been able to sustain a modest, but steady population growth ever since. Perhaps the last reminder of how devastating an urban population’s exodus can be is found downtown. For years a microcosm of the struggling urban centers in the Midwest where a population primarily exists only between the hours of 9 to 5, the downtown area has recently seen an infusion of public works tax dollars, the construction of several new residential towers, and another green light on the long-awaited Filene’s redevelopment which should help transform the area into a bustling neighborhood, instead of a commercial zone.
2. Boomtown – The elevated central artery disappeared, and the development of South Boston’s Waterfront began in earnest. A new cityscape now rises-up to greet you, seemingly every season, when you cross south over the Fort Point Channel. Fort Point, Seaport, the Innovation District, Fan Pier, the Convention Center – the amount of renovation and new construction projects that have happened, are happening, or will happen is hard to keep up with. Is a major grocery store in the near future?
3. Red, White, and Blue…and Green – After an initial pilot version, LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) entered the building industry mainstream in 2000. Its credibility met with some initial skepticism, but it gained traction and became the industry’s yardstick to determine a building’s degree of sustainability. As a result of the growth of the green building movement, Mayor Menino convened a Green Building Task Force in 2003. The Task Force created a 10 point action plan covering topics from technical assistance to funding to code article amendments. As a direct result of this report, Boston became the first city in the nation to require a green building standard for major building projects when it amended Article 37 of the municipal zoning code to require a LEED Certifiable level of design.
4. Footprint Size Matters – The green building movement also helped usher the terms “greenhouse gas emissions” and “carbon footprint” into our everyday lexicon. In 2010, the Mayor’s Climate Action Leadership Committee released a report detailing a path for reducing Boston’s carbon footprint 25% by the year 2020 and 80% by the year 2050. Two significant, building-related recommendations of the report have already taken effect and will change this year. The first was the adoption of the “stretch code” ordinance requiring new construction to achieve 20% better energy efficiency than ASHRAE Standard 90.1-2007. (Starting in July of this year, the base standard will change to 90.1-2010.)
The second recommendation was the passage of the Building Energy Reporting and Disclosure Ordinance which, to date, has required only the energy performance disclosure of municipal buildings. Beginning in 2014, all non-residential buildings 50,000sf and larger will be required to report theirenergy and water use to the City of Boston via the EPA’s Portfolio Manager, in addition to undergoing an energy assessment, or taking an energy action, every five years. The aforementioned have all contributed towards Boston now being considered one of the “greenest” cities in the country. Moving forward, it will be interesting to see what Mayor Walsh adds to the city’s sustainability narrative.
Carrie Platusich LEED AP BD+C is an Energy Engineer at R.G.Vanderweil Engineers, in Boston.
