Center for Urban and Regional Policy, Completed Projects

Completed Projects

The Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2005-2006

On September 27, 2006 CURP Director Barry Bluestone and Senior Research Fellow Bonnie Heudorfer presented The Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2005-2006 to community and business leaders at a forum hosted by the Boston Foundation. This is the fourth such annual report that CURP has prepared for the Boston Foundation and Citizens' Housing and Planning Association (CHAPA). The Report Card is a diagnostic tool that provides an annual assessment of the region's progress toward providing housing opportunities for all of its citizens. It focuses on housing production in 161 cities and towns including and surrounding Boston and examines trends in housing prices and rents, the preservation of affordable housing, and state and federal funding levels for subsidized housing.

Housing production goals for the region had been established in an earlier CURP report commissioned by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston and the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. Issued in September 2000, A New Paradigm for Housing in Greater Boston warned that high housing costs and inadequate inventory were threatening the region's economic competitiveness. The authors and sponsors called for an ambitious social compact to increase the supply of housing by more than 80 percent over existing production levels. The New Paradigm projected that 15,660 units of housing were needed annually in the Boston PMSA to meet housing needs and moderate the escalation in rents and home prices. Existing production was generating only about 8,500 units a year, of which an estimated 1,300 were designated for occupancy by low or moderate income households. To achieve the required production would mean increasing existing production levels by about 7,200 units per year. The equivalent number of units required for the somewhat larger region generally considered "Greater Boston" was estimated to be about 18,000 units.

CURP has since re-evaluated this estimate in light of the poor economic conditions that have prevailed since 2001, but its conclusion remains that the region needs to increase housing production to that level. The 2004 Housing Report Card acknowledged increased production levels, but noted that there continued to be a mismatch between the types of units being produced – luxury rentals and condominiums in multifamily buildings, age restricted housing, and large expensive single family homes – and the type of housing that would be attractive, affordable, and accessible to a growing workforce.

The sponsors of The New Paradigm report also called for an objective system by which to measure the progress the region was making toward meeting its housing needs, and the Report Card was designed to do that by annually performing the following tasks:

Assessing economic trends and market conditions that affect current and projected housing needs;
Collecting, consolidating, and reporting housing data from various public and private sources that can be used to assess the adequacy of production levels;
Improving accessibility and utility of information so that policymakers, housing advocates, community leaders, realtors, housing developers, and others can evaluate performance;
Measuring progress in key areas of housing development, including production of new housing and rehabilitation of the existing stock, housing affordability, and government support for housing.

What distinguishes The Greater Boston Housing Report Card from the many other excellent housing reports that this region generates is this annual monitoring of housing activity by type, location and price point. By identifying trends early on, and clarifying their impact, the Report Card has helped galvanize private and public support for meeting the housing challenges faced by the Greater Boston region.

This year's report is the first since the market began to soften in mid-2005. To learn more about this year's findings, download the report by clicking here .

Revenue Sharing and the Future of the Massachusetts Economy

The future economic prosperity of Massachusetts is dependent on increasing the fiscal capacity of cities and towns, according to findings from "Revenue Sharing and the Future of the Massachusetts Economy.” The report – authored by CURP Director Barry Bluestone, CURP Associate Director David Soule and CURP Senior Research Fellow Alan Clayton-Matthews for the Massachusetts Municipal Association – explains that that economic development turns increasingly on the ability of local communities to compete in the regional, national and global economy by offering vital public services and high-quality public amenities.

"Revenue Sharing and the Future of the Massachusetts Economy” concludes that Massachusetts must re-craft the fiscal partnership between the state and local governments if municipalities are to play their critical role in economic development, and recommends three steps towards achieving this goal:

A new and enduring revenue sharing partnership

Diversifying the local tax and revenue structure

Increasing local management authority

Click here to download "Revenue Sharing and the Future of the Massachusetts Economy.”

The Greater Boston Housing
Report Card 2004

"The Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2004" is the third in a series of annual assessments designed to measure the progress the region is making toward providing housing opportunities for all of its citizens. This report, like its predecessors, was prepared by the Center for Urban and Regional Policy in collaboration with The Boston Foundation and Citizens’ Housing and Planning Association (CHAPA).

In 2004, for the second year in a row, the region made modest progress toward increasing the production of housing. However, total production remains below what is ultimately needed to bring housing costs into line with household incomes. Moreover, the types of housing being produced – age-restricted housing, luxury condominiums and rentals, and single family housing for affluent households – do not address the shortage of moderately priced housing suitable to attract and retain a young workforce. Thus, much more is required to reduce barriers to housing production and to support the construction and preservation of housing that will contribute to the state’s economic competitiveness.

Click here to download "The Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2004".

Click here to view the PowerPoint presentation of the findings .

Chapter 40R School Cost Analysis and Proposed Smart Growth School Cost Insurance Supplement

As currently enacted in 2005, Chapter 40R is unlikely to result in appreciable progress toward the construction of sufficient new housing to moderate the excessive home price inflation that has characterized Massachusetts for over 20 years.

This report – researched and written by Ted Carman, President of Concord Square Development Company along with Eleanor White, President of Housing Partners, Inc., and Barry Bluestone, Director of CURP – recommends that the provisions of Chapter 70 be amended to provide for a Smart Growth School Cost Insurance Supplement to be paid to communities which pass Chapter 40R Smart Growth Districts. It has provided the basis for another new law, Chapter 40S, which has passed the Massachusetts Senate and is awaiting action in the Massachusetts house. The new law is expected to be passed by the House before it adjourns on November 18, 2005.

To download "Chapter 40R School Cost Analysis and Proposed Smart Growth School Cost Insurance Supplement" click here.

SaveBostonMoney.com

Together with Boston City Councilor Mike Ross, CURP launched a web site, www.savebostonmoney.com , which offered citizens a forum for expressing their opinions on how the city could save money and eliminate waste. The site was developed based on research conducted by students in an Honors Adjunct to the "Politics of Budgeting and Taxation" course taught by Northeastern political science professor Bruce Wallin.

The site also provided visitors with information about the city's proposed FY '05 budget. Comments submitted to the site were reviewed by individuals at CURP and shared with Councilor Ross, the chair of the Boston City Council Ways & Means Committee.

Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2003

CURP's second annual Greater Boston Housing Report Card follows up where the 2002 Report Card left off. CURP senior fellow Bonnie Heudorfer, director Barry Bluestone, and research associate Stein Helmrich led the research on the project, which was done in collaboration with The Boston Foundation and the Citizens' Housing and Planning Association (CHAPA).

This report evaluates how the Greater Boston housing market performed during 2003. It looks specifically at:

economic and demographic changes in the region

new housing

rent, home prices, and housing affordability

affordable housing production

state and federal funding

goals for new housing

Click here to download the Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2003 .

Click here to download the Power Point presentation of the findings .

MassAgenda.com

Co-sponsored by Northeastern's Urban Law and Public Policy Institute, MassAgenda.com was a citizen journalism website developed for use by community organizations throughout the region. CURP assumed management of MassAgenda.com in April 2004, hoping to successfully transform the struggling project into one that would be a viable resource for community residents and agencies, and replicable in other cities. The site intended to feature up-to-date news stories and information that community organizations could use to serve their clients and spread the word about their own activities. Although the project did not garner widespread attention, the efforts have helped pioneer a stronger link between Northeastern University and its surrounding community, and forged a partnership between CURP and Roxbury.com.

Fenway Alliance Economic Profile

Within the Fenway Cultural District there are 18 thriving institutions of art, music, religion, and higher learning, which as a group form the Fenway Alliance. In 1997, the Alliance prepared a planning report to detail the impact and potential these institutions had on the surrounding area. The Alliance, in conjunction with CURP, has updated this report. The new report will help to show the importance of these institutions to the district, as well as help prove that the Fenway Cultural District is a beautiful and viable city center. Using multiple criteria the report calculates the economic impact of each member institution and the Alliance as a whole. Click here to visit the Fenway Alliance.

Local Staff Support for the Boston Citistates Project

Neil Peirce, a nationally syndicated columnist, was asked by the Boston Foundation and the Barr Foundation to undertake a "citistates" study of the Boston region. Peirce has done a similar effort in more than 20 other regions in the country. His report was presented in the Spring of 2004 to the foundations and precised in the Boston Globe. David Soule, then a Senior Research Fellow at CURP, was designated as the local contact for the project and facilitated a number of key interactions between the project and key local and state officials.

To view a website detailing the report, click here.

Inter-University Urban Center Consortium

CURP was actively engaged in a consortium of urban research centers at universities across the country. Members met at the annual conferences of the Urban Affairs Association and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning to discuss mutual concerns such as staffing, university and community politics, and involving faculty in work.

Weston Housing Survey

Under this grant from the Town of Weston, CURP conducted a mail survey of all town employees in Weston and all METCO parents in the Weston School district in order to ascertain the extent to which there is a desire among employees and school parents to live in the Town of Weston, if affordable housing were made available.

Click here to download the full report.

Boston Renaissance Resource Kit

Helping to create new curriculum materials for the public schools is a priority for CURP. This is particularly true in an age when the computer has entered the classroom, but there is confusion about how to use it effectively. The Boston Renaissance Resource Kit is the first in what will be a series of a state-of-the-art interactive web and CD-Rom based multimedia products specifically prepared for students, teachers, journalists, non-profits, community organizations, and government agencies throughout the Greater Boston region.

In a graphically rich and easy-to-use format, the Resource Kit contains all of the data from the Greater Boston Social Survey, a comprehensive survey of over 1,800 households in the region carried out in the mid-1990s. This survey, with over 400 pieces of information about each of these families, was the basis for the book The Boston Renaissance: Race, Space, and Economic Change in an American Metropolis by Barry Bluestone and Mary Huff Stevenson, published in 2000. The Kit, which was developed by Hamilton Analytics, Inc., also includes data from the U.S. decennial censuses for all 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts from 1950 through 2000 as well as a link to the Boston Indicators Report 2002 website.

The Resource Kit allows anyone to create literally thousands of charts and tables with a few simple clicks of the mouse, forgoing the need for extensive training in sophisticated statistical software. The Resource Kit also provides guidance on dveloping curriculum materials for integrating the Kit into current and planned middle school and high school history and social science courses. Another tutorial is aimed at community organization leaders and staff.

CURP is working closely with the Boston Public Schools, the Boston Foundation, and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council to assure the widest dissemination of this powerful information tool.

The Boston Renaissance Resource Kit can be downloaded at www.bostren.org .

For more information on the Resource Kit contact Joe Christo, Managing Editor at (617) 373-7103 or j.christo@neu.edu.

PHOTO: Building Our Heritage Report Cover

Building on our Heritage: A Housing Strategy for Smart Growth and Economic Development

This report was developed at CURP for the Commonwealth Housing Task Force, an ad hoc group of housing advocates, developers, business and civic leaders, and academics, who began meeting in 2001 to develop solutions to the housing problem in Massachusetts. In this report, the Task Force made two recommendations:

1. The state provide financial and other incentives to local communities that pass Smart Growth Overlay Zoning Districts that allow the building of single-family homes on smaller lots and the construction of apartments for families at all income levels.

2. The state increase its commitment to fund affordable housing for families of low- and moderate-income.

Barry Bluestone, Director of CURP, worked with Eleanor White, an associate at CURP and President of Housing Partners, Inc. and Ted Carmen, President of the Concord Square Development Company, Inc., to craft this proposal. This team, along with many others from the business, academic, and non-profit world, presented the proposal to the Massachusetts State Legislature's housing committees in late November of 2003. The proposal was passed into state law in 2004 as Chapter 40R.

Click here to read the full report, "Building on our Heritage: A Housing Strategy for Smart Growth and Economic Development."

Click here to read the Executive Summary.

Alliance for Regional Stewardship 2003 Conference

The Alliance for Regional Stewardship (ARS) is a national organization that facilitates regional awareness and collaboration among civic, business, and public sector organizations in the major metropolitan areas of the country. David Soule, at the time a Senior Research Fellow at CURP, is an officer of the Alliance and succeeded in convincing ARS to hold their national convention in Boston in November 2003. CURP was featured as an example of an academic center focused on the region it serves at the conference.

University/Community Housing Partnership Study

Under this small research grant from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, CURP prepared a report that reviews university/community partnerships designed to help produce housing for students, university employees, and city residents. Such examples as Davenport Commons at Northeastern are highlighted in the project.

Click here to view the final report, "A Primer on University-Community Housing Partnerships".

Transportation Department Map Display

CURP and the Central Transportation Planning Staff (CTPS) co-sponsored an exhibit during National Transportation Week, May 12 - May 16, 2003. The curator for the exhibit, which was entitled "The Coming of the Roads," was David Soule, at the time a Senior Research Fellow at CURP. The display featured a series of historical maps of Massachusetts dating from 1789 through 1993. The maps were being used courtesy of the Harvard Map Collection at Harvard College. They outlined the historical development of the highway transportation system in Massachusetts. The exhibit was held at the State Transportation Building, 10 Park Plaza, on the second floor lobby.

Citizen Schools Client

CURP acted as a client to a Citizen Schools project involving a dozen students from the Wilson Middle School in Boston. Sixth and seventh graders from the school were conducting a survey of young people in inner city neighborhoods regarding attitudes about their communities and new community services they would like to see. To read a story from the CURP website on the students' final presentation click here.

Housing Report Card Project 2002

Greater Boston's affordable housing crisis is nothing if not well-documented. This report asks whether all the attention and presumed commitment to meeting the region's housing crisis is turning into real progress. Are production targets being met? Is sufficient affordable housing being preserved and produced? Are universities maintaining their commitments to house more of their students? Are local governments making progress at streamlining their zoning and building code practices to reduce barriers to the successful production of housing?

CURP teamed up with the Citizens' Housing and Planning Association (CHAPA) to undertake a five-year assessment project to carefully measure the progress toward meeting the region's housing goals. The assessment will be done once a year and the findings from the assessment will be made public. These assessments will stress the progress we are making as well as the work still to be done.

The Regional Housing Report Card will:

Establish criteria for housing benchmarks and goals for the region - updating housing goals based on changing economic conditions and housing prices.
Collect and consolidate housing data from various federal, state, local, and private sources.
Improve accessibility and provide a useful and easily understandable format for housing indicators.
Measure progress in key areas of housing development, including production and rehabilitation.

The report will contain sections on:

Greater Boston housing prices, supply, and affordability
Greater Boston housing goals
Success (and/or failure) to date in achieving those goals
Overall assessment of progress

Click here to download the complete Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2002.

Click below to download the referenced appendices:

Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Appendix 3
Appendix 4
Appendix 5

Click here to view Barry Bluestone's Power Point presentation outlining the findings of the Report Card.

Third Tier Cities project

In the 1990s, Boston became the "renaissance city." Much of New England enjoyed unparalleled prosperity with low unemployment and rising incomes. But not all cities in the region shared in the good times. A number of smaller cities fell further and further behind first tier urban centers like Boston and the prosperous smaller second tier towns in the region. These "third tier" cities and towns experienced increased immigration coupled with a declining employment base. Lawrence and Holyoke are typical of urban centers that have experienced sluggish job growth and slow economic growth while simultaneously undergoing a demographic revolution.

The Third Tier Cities project was designed to change the way we view and act on labor and employment problems in these cities. The project conducted a comprehensive labor market study of both Lawrence and Holyoke as the first stage in recommending strategies for improving employment opportunity, particularly for new Hispanic immigrants. The project convened a community partnership, including the Chambers of Commerce, local labor unions, community colleges, and church groups to address the labor market problems facing these cities. The goal was to reinvigorate the economy of these cities through innovative education and training programs and thereby counter the belief that some communities are inevitably distressed and permanently depressed.

Boston City Council Ways & Means Report

This study for the Boston City Council's Ways & Means Committee was completed in June 2002 and includes the results of the Boston City Budget Survey, as well as case studies detailing how other city governments have attempted to confront challenges similar to those faced in Boston today.

Included are parking fines, parking fees, and zoning board fees across a spectrum of American cities and a series of best practice programs that outline what other cities and regions have done to govern more effectively and efficiently.

Download the Ways & Means Report.

CEOs for Cities project

CURP and the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago were commissioned by CEOs for Cities, a national bipartisan organization, to work on a project titled, "The New Metropolitan Alliances: Regional Collaboration for Economic Development." After exploring more than 100 examples of development-focused alliances throughout the country, the team selected five cases to illustrate the key ingredients in the formation of regional alliances.

The economic development initiatives included in the report were presented at a CEOs for Cities conference in Chicago in May 2002. Discussants included Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago and Mayor John Norquist of Milwaukee. The research will be used by members of CEOs for Cities to guide their future economic development efforts. Click here to read "The New Metropolitan Alliances."

32nd Urban Affairs Association Annual Conference host

CURP and Northeastern University hosted the annual conference of the Urban Affairs Association (UAA) in March 2002. The UAA is a professional organization for urban researchers at universities, public, and non-profit organizations. The UAA supports universities in developing education, research, and service programs in urban studies and urban policy. The Journal of Urban Affairs is sponsored by UAA.

The conference theme was "What's Right About Cities and an Urban Way of Life." Over 400 participants gathered at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel for the three-day event that featured luncheon speakers Gail Snowden of Fleet Bank and David Soule of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council. The last day of the conference featured guided tours of Boston and Lowell that focused on urban policy and planning issues. CURP worked with faculty from Harvard, MIT, the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, and Boston University in planning the receptions, lunch speakers, plenary sessions, and tours.

Housing Developers' Clinic

The World Class Housing Collaborative carried out its first Developers' Clinic in the fall of 2001, attended by over twenty potential inner-city developers. The clinic, consisting of three four-hour sessions carried out in the space of three weeks at Northeastern, provided a basic introduction to the world of development and all of the requirements that must be met for successful mixed-income housing construction and management. The response of the participants was uniformly positive; they requested that WCHC schedule additional sessions of the clinic in the future.

For more information and pictures, see "Clinic imparts knowledge to future community-builders."

PHOTO: High-tech construction in Cambridge

Cambridge Linkage Study

The City of Cambridge is in many ways a model of the New Economy. Its explosive growth in high technology industries has generated a prodigious number of new jobs. But its very success has put enormous pressure on the city's housing stock. As a result, home prices and rents have soared. Longtime Cambridge residents are being priced out of their own community, reducing the economic and social diversity of the city. Cambridge asked CURP to help update its "linkage program" - the fee the city charges commercial developers per square foot of new construction in order to fund an affordable housing trust fund. The ideal linkage fee is a rate that allows Cambridge to continue to attract commercial development projects while also providing revenues for increasing the supply of affordable housing.

The Cambridge Linkage study had two purposes. The first was to examine the philosophical, legal, and real-world issues surrounding city-imposed linkage fees. The second was to conduct a survey of employees in Cambridge enterprises to establish how many relocated to Cambridge specifically to take new jobs in the city. Based on this survey, as well as a review of linkage fees charged in other competing jurisdictions, CURP recalculated the square foot linkage fee for the city to reflect the impact of new commercial development on housing prices and the need to construct new housing supply to mitigate rising housing prices.

Click here to download "The Impact of Cambridge Office Development on Cambridge Housing Prices."

Click below to download the referenced appendices:

Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Appendix 3
Appendix 4
Appendix 5
Appendix 6

FHLB/CHAPA Affordable Housing Competition

The Center for Urban and Regional Policy's World Class Housing Collaborative sponsored a team in the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston and Citizens Housing and Planning Association (FHLBB/CHAPA) affordable housing competition. The CURP team focused on revitalizing Boston's Four Corners neighborhood with an emphasis on providing mixed-income affordable housing in the area, along with social services and commercial space.

The CURP team included:

Tom Dapice, Harvard University

Frances Darden, University of Massachusetts Boston

Basak Demires, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

David Kay, Northeastern University

Jennifer Norins, University of Massachusetts-Boston

Cagatay Ozkul, Tufts University

Yan Zhang, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

CURP Executive Director Barry Bluestone and Gretchen Weismann, Project Director of A New Paradigm for Housing in Greater Boston, were the primary sponsors of the project.

TeleCom City Housing Impact Study

In one of the great innovations in economic development, the Boston-area cities of Malden, Medford, and Everett joined together to create a 200-acre industrial park devoted to attracting telecommunications companies to the region. Ultimately, Telecom City hopes to create 7,500 new jobs and expand open and recreational spaces. In a bold attempt to try to integrate Telecom city into the surrounding community instead of uprooting old neighborhoods, the Mystic Valley Development Authority retained CURP to study the potential housing needs of future employees. Using a sophisticated evaluation technique developed at the Center, CURP estimated the number and type of new housing units needed to accommodate the expected new demand as well as meet the existing housing shortfall. As a result of CURP's research, the three cities are now undertaking a planning initiative, "Project 525," to develop the 525 housing units called for in the study.

CURP then considered how it can assist the Tri-City area in the production of this housing by bringing together developers, city agencies, and the local communities to produce appropriate housing for the expected new arrivals.

To obtain more details about TeleCom City and CURP's recommendations, download the full report: TeleCom City Housing Impact Study.

"A New Paradigm for Housing in Greater Boston"

The housing crisis in Greater Boston was reaching epic proportions with no end in site in December of 1999 when Cardinal Bernard Law issued his challenge encouraging policymakers to work together to develop a "new paradigm" for housing in Greater Boston. The Cardinal asked CURP to prepare a detailed report that could lead the way in responding to the housing crisis by bringing together a large task force of Boston community leaders, housing experts, government officials, business executives, and concerned citizens. The result of this massive collaboration was "A New Paradigm for Housing in Greater Boston." This report blew the lid off the old ways of thinking about housing and brought forth new ideas for how to increase the region's housing stock to meet demand and moderate market prices. Using methods developed at CURP, the report identified the need for constructing 36,000 additional new units of housing in Greater Boston over the next five years.

CURP not only detailed what kind of new units of housing would be required but created a plan devising how the new housing units could be built by a collaboration of private developers, government agencies, community and civic groups, businesses, and universities. The plan details how each group can contribute to meeting the region's housing goals by overcoming the social, political, and economic barriers to the production of owner-occupied and rental housing. The highly regarded and well-publicized Cardinal's Report has helped to galvanize development in Boston and throughout the region.

The report was the centerpiece for the Cardinal's conference on housing in September 2000 attended by over 300 community, business, and government leaders including the Massachusetts Governor, representatives of the Boston Mayor's office, and members of the State Legislature. Later in the year, the report was presented by CURP director Barry Bluestone and Cardinal Law before the entire Massachusetts Congressional delegation in Washington, D.C.

Click here to read "A New Paradigm for Housing in Greater Boston."

Minority Vendor Contracting project

The first project out of CURP's Community Enterprise Technical Assistance Collaborative was the Minority Vendor Contracting project, a study examining changes in the nature of supplier relations between small firms and large institutions. (The firms that supply to universities, banks, insurance companies, and hospitals everything from toner cartridges and food service to interior painting and window replacement.)

CETAC found that because of the wave of mergers involving such large institutions as banks and hospitals, small vendors were being displaced in favor of national and international suppliers with enormous scale economies. CETAC also discovered that businesses unable to engage in e-commerce with business-to-business (B2B) technology soon will be frozen out of the marketplace altogether. The findings of the Minority Vendor Contracting project are now being expanded upon in a large survey project within CETAC.

The report, "Economic Anchors and Vendor Contracting: New Barriers (and Potential New Opportunities) for Small Minority Business in the New Economy" is available to download.

PHOTO: Cover of 'The Boston Renaissance'

GBSS Resource Kit focus group project

The Greater Boston Social Survey is a comprehensive survey of over 1,800 households in the region that was carried out in the mid-1990s. This survey, with over 600 pieces of information about each of these families, was the basis for the book The Boston Renaissance: Race, Space, and Economic Change in an American Metropolis by Barry Bluestone and Mary Huff Stevenson, published in 2000.

When applying for the funding to develop the Boston Renaissance Resource Kit, CURP was asked to administer a series of focus groups to determine how the GBSS data might be used, and if it would in fact be appropriate for a classroom setting. The focus groups approved of the project, and the Boston Renaissance Resource Kit got the go-ahead for its development.

"How We Live" BSA/NU Charrette

The Boston Society of Architects was the sponsor of "How We Live: A Civic Initiative for a Livable New England," a series of conferences and charrettes designed to explore ways that future growth creates, maintains, or restores livability to New England and Greater Boston's communities. In April 2001, CURP was a co-sponsor of a "How We Live" regional charrette. The charrette was held at Northeastern University and involved 250 participants from varying occupations and fields. The keynote speakers for the weekend charrette were Rep. Michael Capuano (D-MA) and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR).

For more information and pictures from the charrette, take a look at "Charrette debates 'How We Live.'"