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Tourism And The Livable City: The New Boston Discovers The Old Boston * |
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Bruce Ehrlich and Peter Dreier
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Each year, millions of people visit the city. They come for business, academic conferences, and special events like the Boston Marathon. They come to visit Boston's colonial era sites, such as the Paul Revere House, and to wander through its well-preserved historic neighborhoods. They come for graduation ceremonies at one of the area's many colleges and universities and to tour the New England countryside. They come to shop in one of the city's notable retail areas, such as Faneuil Hall Marketplace, visit one of several nationally-ranked museums, or attend the theater or symphony. 1 In fact, surveys of tourists place Boston among the top five US cities to visit.2
What is remarkable about Boston's success as a tourist destination is that it occurred almost by accident. That is, it was not the result of a carefully planned strategy by government officials, business executives, or civic leaders to develop a tourist industry as a key component of the city's economy. Rather, various political, cultural, social and economic forces, moving along somewhat different trajectories, converged to make Boston a highly desirable destination for visitors.
Tourist industry leaders and organizations have played only a minor role in the city's recent emergence as a tourist and visitor location. During the first two decades of urban renewal, the industry was small. It lacked its own distinct political organization, operating as a committee within the Boston Chamber of Commerce until 1974, when the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau was created. Obviously, some key business and political decisions -- to build and then expand the convention center, to increase the number of hotels, to set up a visitor and convention bureau -- were linked directly to promoting a tourist economy. But, for the most part, Boston thrives as a tourist city, because it naturally draws visitors eager to participate in its economic life, learn about its historic and cultural features, and/or take advantage of its innate urban qualities.
The economic position of the hotel industry shapes its political power and interests. The high demand for a limited number of rooms makes it highly profitable, with among the highest occupancy levels and room rates in the United States. Between 1975 and 1994, the number of hotel rooms in Boston doubled to 12,400, while average daily room rates (in constant dollars) more than doubled. Thus, in comparison with hotel owners elsewhere in the United States, those in Boston have been less concerned with improving the city's attractiveness to visitors. Until it mobilized to construct a new convention center in the late-1990s, the visitor industry had not organized to promote the development of major new attractions, gambling, or other tourist venues, and had given only limited support to recent efforts to upgrade the Freedom Trail. In fact, industry opposition, along with powerful neighborhood opposition and fiscally conservative legislators, stopped the development of a proposed "megaplex" in 1995 that would have combined a football stadium with the proposed convention center. The stadium, which few considered essential to the city's economy or image, was seen by hotel owners as a financial and political liability standing in the way of the smaller and more economically important convention center.
The evolution of Boston's modern tourist and visitor industry is tightly interwoven with broader economic and cultural developments that have taken place within the city since the 1950s. The preservation of historic sites and older downtown neighborhoods -- two of Boston's most highly regarded features -- had been, until recently, only reluctantly accepted as a necessary but secondary public policy. The primary economic development strategy was focused on the creation of the "New Boston." It was only in the mid-1970s that many began to realize one of the most valuable aspects of the New Boston, particularly for tourists, is the Old Boston.
Yet if tourism planning is underdeveloped in Boston, urban planning and design, historic preservation, and struggles over urban space are not. Not surprisingly, then, tourism in Boston does not stand far apart from the city's other commercial, cultural, and recreational activities; to a great extent it is absorbed into the daily life of the city. In this respect, Boston is much like European cities. Mixed-use districts and development define the city's visitor spaces. Indeed, the success of the Boston tourism experience -- both for tourists and local non-tourists -- is largely related to the fact that it was not planned mainly for tourists. It may also be true, however, that, in the future, better tourism planning may be necessary to preserve its success.
The emergence of Boston's growth coalition during the 1950s and its implementation of a massive urban renewal program has been richly chronicled elsewhere.3 For over twenty years, it entailed extremely close cooperation between the city's business leaders, mayors, and the powerful Boston Redevelopment Authority. Private elites and government leaders have played a very active role in connecting larger economic forces to the revitalization of downtown Boston. The razing of the West End neighborhood was only the most controversial of many actions during these years. But the general success of the coalition is not in doubt. It is worth noting here that the promotion of tourism was only a minor factor in the overall redevelopment plan for the city.4
Boston's urban renewal program, combined with the broader political economic shifts, triggered an economic recovery by the mid-1960s.5 By the mid-l970s, the private economy had replaced federal programs as the catalyst of Boston's downtown development. It was no longer necessary to lure office developers with local property tax breaks. By the early l980s, Boston had forged what might be termed a "growth management" coalition. It was built on somewhat fragile but nonetheless resilient foundations, composed of segments that had different reasons for resisting unbridled growth.
The growth of Greater Boston's tourist economy has been driven by the city's economic revitalization over the past four decades. This was largely the result of three dominant forces: the restructuring of the global economy with its impact on urban economies,6 increased federal spending on health, higher education, and defense; and implementation of an aggressive, federally-financed, urban renewal program. The city -- historically a center of finance, business services, higher education, and medicine -- is now an important regional node in the new international division of labor: the primary location for government and business services in New England; a leading site for health care and medical research; an important international academic center; the hub of a large regional defense and computer industry and a finance center based on its large mutual fund and insurance industries. Boston stands fourth, behind New York, London, and Tokyo, in the value of stock funds under management.
Boston's tourist facilities reflect the dominant corporate and professional character of travel to the city. Many of the large hotels are incorporated in mixed-use projects that also include office, retail, and/or residential space: Sheraton at Prudential Center, Westin and Marriott at Copley Place, Boston Harbor Hotel at Rowes Wharf, Marriott at Cambridge Center, and the Charles Hotel at Charles Square represent almost 30 percent of all hotel rooms in Boston and Cambridge. Ninety-four percent of all hotels built between 1978 and 1995 were in the luxury or first-class categories, and many lower-priced hotels have been upgraded. As a result, the overall share of budget and mid-priced hotels has dropped from 43 percent to less than 30 percent of rooms. Average room rates in Boston are among the highest in the United States, exceeding $145 per night in 1997.
Despite the relative strength of the Boston visitor market, the supply of hotel rooms and meeting space lags far behind that of most large metropolitan areas in the United States. With 3.2 million people, Greater Boston is the eighth largest metropolitan area in the country. But among 24 major market centers for convention and trade shows, Boston ranks sixteenth in the number of hotel rooms and 41st in convention space. The city's principal meeting venue, the Hynes Convention Center, built in 1963 as part of the Prudential Center project, ranks 22nd among the nation's major convention halls.9
Boston's visitor industry is absolutely integral to the broader economy, yet it is not one of its four major economic sectors (FIRE, health, professional services, and government); regionally, education and high technology also surpass tourism in importance. Visitors in Boston spend between $2.8 and $4.6 billion, representing between 8 percent and 13 percent of the city's economy. Employment in travel and tourism businesses accounts for just 6-7 percent of total jobs, which is average among U.S. cities.10
Overnight domestic and foreign leisure tourists account for slightly more than half of all visitors to Greater Boston. Yet because an estimated 40 percent of these tourists are visiting friends or relatives, they account for only about 30 percent of total visitor revenues and 20 percent of hotel stays. Hotel room bookings during spring graduations and fall homecomings are among the highest all year. Many leisure tourists, especially family vacationers, often find room rates in the city prohibitive and stay in lower-priced accommodations outside of the city.
The various public and private agencies organized to promote tourism in Boston and Massachusetts have only recently begun to coordinate their activities, which mostly consists of marketing efforts directed to specific regional, national, and international visitor markets. The agencies include the Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism (MOTT), Massachusetts Port Authority, Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau (GBCVB), Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, and Massachusetts Lodging Association. MOTT works in close concert with, and provides major funding to, GBCVB and other private tourist bureaus across the state. Until very recently, Boston's city government played only a very limited role in promoting tourism. Unlike the state government, which recycles approximately 20 percent ($14.5 million in 1996) of the revenues generated through the hotel/motel tax back into tourist promotion and marketing, and which subsidizes the Hynes Convention Center, the municipal government spends very little, although it raised approximately $17 million in hotel/motel taxes in 1995.
The municipal government has only recently begun play to play a major role in tourism development. A recent collaboration between the city and state governments to construct a proposed $700 million convention center includes $158 million in City funding, its first significant investment in tourism infrastructure. Furthermore, state legislation authorizing the financing of the convention center also requires the development of an additional 4,800 hotel rooms in Boston and Cambridge, the tax receipts from which will be used to repay state construction bonds. This requirement will result in a 33 percent increase in hotel rooms in just five year years and ensure that the City and the BRA aggressively promote the rapid planning and permitting of new hotels.
This stands in sharp contrast to the BRA's role during the 1980s real estate boom, when it assisted the profitability of existing hotels by using its zoning and design review authority to restrict the supply of new hotels. At one point, in 1981, the BRA had 25 proposals for new hotels under review. Only a few of these were ever approved, allowing for continued growth without producing higher vacancy rates and, thus, lower profits for hotel owners.11 By 1997, however, the pent-up demand for hotel space, along with the requirements of the convention center bill, had prompted a deluge of new hotel development proposals.
At a time when most American cities are seen as places to avoid rather than visit, Boston stands as an exception. If it seems mundane that Boston promotes itself as "America's Walking City," this is as much a statement about other American cities -- where walking is perceived as unsafe, unpleasant, or pointless -- as it is about Boston's own urban qualities. Boston's competitive advantage in tourism lies in the fact that it is still a city, where the past, present, and future co-exist in reality and the imagination, as is possible only in a real city. To attract tourists, many cities have contrived nostalgic entertainment and shopping sites, such as South Street Seaport in New York, Laclede's Landing in St. Louis, and the Cannery Row shopping mall in Monterrey, California. While Boston is not totally immune to these trends, it draws primarily on its innate and more substantive qualities. It may be, as some have observed, "the ultimate theme park -- the Tomorrowland tourist attraction -- reality itself."13
Until the mid-1970s the historic sites in and around the city were Boston's main tourist attractions, not its residential neighborhoods and commercial areas. In fact, a 1967 survey found that only 8 percent of all visitors thought the best thing about the city was its overall appearance, and those who found it attractive were praising its new construction. The city's "squalor -- its filthy streets, its slums, the air of decay that hangs over many of its sections" - was cited as a major detraction.14 In the last twenty years, however, the motivations of tourists to Boston have changed. People now come to Boston to see the city as well as to do things in it; by 1994, "city visit" and shopping had surpassed historical sightseeing as the most popular visitor activities.15
Increasingly Boston's appeal rests on its well preserved historic neighborhoods and buildings, its cultural assets, and its retail and entertainment districts. Boston's South End, Back Bay, Beacon Hill, North End, and Charlestown neighborhoods offer tourists a unique collection of preserved 19th century neighborhoods. Other staples of Boston's visitor experience are the Freedom Trail (a walking trail that connects sixteen colonial and revolutionary era sites), the Boston National Historical Park, the Museum of Science, New England Aquarium, and Museum of Fine Arts. The most heavily patronized establishment of any type is Faneuil Hall Marketplace, which occupies three restored nineteenth century market buildings and is located adjacent to historic Faneuil Hall on the Freedom Trail. Other important shopping venues are Copley Place and the Prudential Center, two modern indoor malls at the core of the city's main hotel district, and Newbury Street in Back Bay, seven blocks of boutiques, specialty stores, European designer clothing, and restaurants and bars, most of them housed in restored Victorian-era buildings. The recent introduction into Boston of numerous luxury retail shops has become yet one more major selling point to tourists, especially to European travelers. Significantly, all of the above attractions serve the local market as much as, if not more than, the tourist and visitor market.
The Boston area's 59 colleges and universities also have had an effect on the visitor economy that extends well beyond graduations, college tours for high school seniors, and sporting events. Harvard University, for example, is one of the essential attractions for European travelers, while to a lesser extent the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is of similar importance to Japanese visitors. Harvard Square has become a major student and visitor shopping district. The large number of wealthy foreign students, especially those at Boston University, has had a pronounced effect on the city's nightlife and luxury retail trade.16 And, most significantly, graduates from area schools, especially from Harvard and M.I.T., have been a driving force in the growth of the region's high technology and information industries, which have been a major magnet for business travel.
Boston does have one space containing many essential features of a "tourist bubble": the combined Copley Place and Prudential Center complex. The Copley/Prudential complex includes three hotels and a convention center along with office, retail, and residential uses. Along with four other adjacent hotels, one third of the city's hotel rooms are located here. Yet, the complex, although physically set off from the street on superblocks, does not segregate tourist activity from the city. It is surrounded by attractive neighborhoods and spectacular public spaces that bring visitors out into the streets, and it is also heavily used by locals for shopping, eating, and entertainment. Still the enclosed private spaces here do represent a departure from the dominant Boston tourist experience. And a recent proposal to construct a third such hotel/entertainment/retail complex over nearby rail and highway air rights could further challenge the traditional city of streets.
Boston 200 Master Plan17
Long before Boston established itself as a popular tourist destination, it was widely recognized as a principal site of the American Revolution and a key city in the nation's early history. The effort to preserve and memorialize this history began in 1818, when land was first acquired to build a monument on Bunker Hill, site of the first major battle of the Revolution, and continued through the early 20th century with the disparate efforts of historical and preservation societies to save historic buildings and ships from demolition and convert them to public museums.
In 1951, The Freedom Trail, a concept linking many of these sites, was first proposed by a local newspaper columnist and a member of the Old North Church.18 That same year, the federal government also initiated efforts to preserve Boston's historical sites, when it restored and designated Dorchester Heights as a national historic site.19
Congress had created the Boston National Historic Sites Commission in 1955, whose members included Representative Thomas (Tip) O'Neill of Cambridge, future Speaker of the House, and Walter Muir Whitehill, a noted historian, whose writings, advocacy, and planning efforts would have great influence in Boston through the next decade.20 By 1959, the Commission's work had already led to the creation of the Minute Man National Historical Park in the nearby towns of Lexington and Concord. Its final report, in 1960, clearly established the need for greater preservation in the midst of the urban renewal efforts already underway. It also proposed creation of a Boston National Historic Sites Advisory Board to manage eight key sites and development of a visitors center.21 Soon afterward, under Whitehill's leadership, the City created the Boston Historic Conservation Committee, representing the first systematic local effort to survey and evaluate Boston's historic sites and buildings and to integrate this knowledge within broader redevelopment plans. According to a 1966 visitor survey, historical sightseeing was the most popular tourist activity in the city and a key factor in drawing non-business tourists to Boston.22
The impending national celebration of the United States Bicentennial, which would occur in 1976, became the vehicle through which Boston's political and corporate leaders first organized around tourism development. The evolution of this effort over the course of 13 years paralleled broader changes occurring in Boston's development approach. The first plan, initiated by Mayor Collins and the Chamber of Commerce in 1963, was conceived as a World Exposition. Far from celebrating the city or its history, however, this plan envisioned the creation of an experimental new community in Boston Harbor; Boston's historical and cultural resources were considered "collateral events."23
Following Boston's failure to obtain the designation for an "Expo," the City government, under Mayor Kevin White, took an entirely different approach. The "Boston 200 Master Plan," written in 1973, spoke richly about the city's historical resources and its livable urban environment as the center of its tourism strategy.24 The plan called for the development of few tourist-specific facilities; rather, it insisted on the inseparability of the urban environment for tourists, residents, and workers. The City's Bicentennial plan and associated efforts led to the improvement of public spaces and increased historic preservation, and the formation of both the Boston Landmarks Commission and the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau. It also led, finally, to new federal investment, when in 1974, John McCormack, Congressman from South Boston and Speaker of the House of Representatives, obtained passage of the Boston National Historical Park Act, which called for the preservation of several key sites and the establishment of a National Park Service visitors center.25
The U.S. Department of the Interior invested an additional $45 million toward the restoration of Freedom Trail sites between 1985 and 1995. But, despite the importance of Boston's historical legacy as a catalyst for the growth of its modern tourist economy, the historical Boston has not kept pace with the New Boston. Attendance at Freedom Trail sites was flat between 1980 and 1993, at the same time as the number of visitors to the city increased by more than 50 percent.26
Sign protesting proposed New England Patriots stadium in South Boston, 1977.
The fact that Boston is now known for promoting and preserving its history may seem ironic to anyone familiar with the contentious politics of Boston's early redevelopment experience. Indeed, among historians of urban planning, Boston may be best known for the "bulldozer"-style urban renewal epitomized by the razing of the working-class West End neighborhood in the early 1960s, chronicled by Gans in his classic study, The Urban Villagers.27
In l950, the Boston City Planning Board (predecessor to the BRA) had issued a General Plan that proposed redevelopment of 20 percent of the city's land area over the next 25 years.28 A number of Boston's older residential neighborhoods, including Roxbury, Charlestown, the Fenway, Chinatown, and the South End, experienced both demolition and rehabilitation efforts. The net effect was to reduce the overall number of housing units in the city.
The early successes of the coalition supporting renewal galvanized the opposition, which prompted the city government to change the direction of its revitalization strategies and focus on preservation and the management of growth. Despite strong pressures from property developers that could have led to both over-building and the destruction of much of the city's historic fabric, the BRA eventually responded to countervailing voices from civic-minded business leaders, neighborhood organizations, and preservationists, who exercised enough political power to push the BRA to restrict "Manhattanization" of the sections of the city that visitors and tourists now find so appealing. To understand these forces, it is necessary briefly to describe the political struggle over redevelopment in postwar Boston.
Many residents of Boston's older neighborhoods, still suspicious of what they had seen happen in the West End and elsewhere, resisted renewal efforts. Two kinds of opposition emerged. There were both a working class movement to stop the socially disruptive effects of urban renewal and an effort by middle-class professionals to occupy and upgrade attractive, centrally located areas. For many poor and working class residents, urban renewal was seen as a threat to the social fabric of communities. They also doubted that they would capture the benefits of development. For more affluent residents, urban renewal was seen as destroying the historic city and its architectural heritage. Despite these divergent motives, the common goal was to challenge efforts by the municipal government and developers to raze buildings or erect large commercial or residential projects in their neighborhoods.
In the mid-1960s, Charlestown and the South End, two working class neighborhoods with exceptional architectural and historical significance, were confronted with BRA urban renewal plans. Community mobilization led to major public conflicts over displacement, the loss of low-income housing, and the disruption of community life. In Charlestown, over a thousand residents packed a public hearing in 1963 to protest the BRA's initial plans.29 In the South End, with its growing population of downtown professional workers, historic preservation also emerged as a theme. The year 1964 saw the BRA's initial use of preservation planning staff in its redevelopment efforts. The Charlestown Preservation Society and the South End Historical Society were founded in 1965 and 1966, respectively. Although approximately 25 percent of the South End and 10 percent of Charlestown were bulldozed, neighborhood resistance helped prevent further destruction. The BRA shifted its approach to emphasize rehabilitation more than demolition and helped finance the renovation of thousands of dwelling units.30
Beacon Hill became the first neighborhood to obtain Commonwealth of Massachusetts protection through historic district status in 1955, followed by Back Bay in 1966. Back Bay residents, many of them early back-to-the-city pioneers, initially organized in 1964 to defeat a residential tower proposed for Commonwealth Avenue, a mile-long stretch of stately, but deteriorating, Victorian-era mansions and townhouses, and then to turn back a zoning amendment that increased building height limits along the avenue. Following these victories, residents convinced the state legislature (with no opposition) to create the Back Bay Architectural District. In 1972, community efforts resulted in the designation of the South End and parts of Roxbury as National Register districts, which meant that a public review process would now be required before federal funds could be used for building demolition in those areas.
In 1975, preservationists also succeeded in obtaining state legislation to create the Boston Landmarks Commission (BLC). This effort avoided a direct confrontation with real estate development interests by excluding most of downtown from its initial jurisdiction (which grew over time).31 The mission of the BLC is to "protect the beauty of the city of Boston and...[the] areas, sites, structures, and fixtures which constitute or reflect distinctive features of the political, economic, social, cultural or architectural history of the city...[and to] resist and restrain environmental influences adverse to such purposes."32 The Boston Preservation Alliance, the first citywide preservation organization, was founded in 1980.
Only a few of Boston's historic neighborhoods are designated historic districts, however; Charlestown and the North End, as well as other 19th and early 20th century neighborhoods and enclaves throughout Boston have been largely preserved without the imposition of mandatory codes. In these places, social commitment, neighborhood attachment, and community development have been key forces. And while gentrification has also been an important factor, so has the work of neighborhood groups, such as non-profit community development corporations and grassroots tenants organizations in protecting and preserving affordable housing from both market forces and the urban renewal bulldozer. What is significant here is that most city neighborhoods have remained physically intact, retaining large portions of their late 19th century and early 20th century building stock, and that only a few areas suffer from the concentration of blight and abandonment that plague most older American cities.
Critical struggles during the 1970s include the mobilization of neighborhoods across Boston and Cambridge to stop a major inner-city highway plan, which eventually lead to the creation of new parkland and major mass transit improvements.33 Another massive renewal effort, the Park Plaza project, facing the Public Garden and Boston Common, was defeated in 1974, by the broad opposition of local businesses, residents, and environmentalists. In the 1980s, this area was redeveloped with super-luxury housing, hotel, and retail, but at a vastly reduced scale.
In 1978, South End and Back Bay residents opposed construction of the $500 million Copley Place mixed-use project, which included two hotels, on site that bordered these two neighborhoods. While this project was not stopped, pressure from community groups led to the city's first experiment with linked development: Copley Place's developer agreed to set aside a significant portion of all construction jobs for city residents, minority workers, and women. The developer also agreed to set hiring goals for permanent jobs in the complex, and included 25 units of affordable housing in the 100-unit luxury residential part of the project.34 This become the forerunner of Boston's "linkage" policy enacted in l984.35
By the mid-1980s, with the support of Mayor Raymond Flynn, neighborhood councils and other citizen advisory groups gained unprecedented influence over real estate development and zoning policy. The commitment and active participation of residents across the city to protect their communities ensured that governmental action and private development would not destroy the residential base of the city as it sought to increase its value for commercial real-estate development.36 As Sorkin has noted, "In the 'public space' of the theme park or shopping mall, speech itself is restricted. There are no demonstrations in Disneyland. The effort to reclaim the city is the struggle of democracy itself."37 Public spaces, whether in the downtown core or in outlying neighborhoods, are today a key part of Boston's reputation for livability. This is important primarily for how it improves the quality of life for the city's residents, but it also has the effect of making Boston a more attractive city for visitors and tourists.
Quincy Market and two adjacent warehouse buildings, situated between Faneuil Hall and the waterfront, were constructed by the City in 1825. The buildings were initially marked for clearance in 1956 by the Boston City Planning Board, but by 1963 planners, preservationists, and historians, including Whitehill, convinced the BRA they should be saved. The 1964 Urban Renewal Plan drawn up by the Boston Chamber of Commerce recognized the importance of this area in terms of history, architecture, and urban design, although an economically feasible reuse was not yet apparent.39 Several years later, the City obtained a $2 million preservation grant from the federal government which it used to stabilize and restore the buildings, and relocated 400 wholesale produce dealers to a new market located outside of downtown.40
In 1973, the City selected the Rouse/Thompson team to develop the market area; this decision was heavily influenced by local business leaders, as well as by Rouse's financial commitment to pay the City at least $600,000 a year in lease payments and an additional $500,000 donation for the Bicentennial. The City gave the developer an initial three-year property tax abatement and a 99 year lease for the buildings.41 Over the years, this deal has produced a modest profit for the city.42
Rouse and Thompson's initial concept was geared to the local retail market. It was principally intended to serve city residents, downtown office workers, and suburban shoppers, who might be lured back to the city with an exciting shopping experience. It was intended to be "real," selling useful goods in an authentic environment (not "pseudo-period commercial design"); and relate with "genuine meaning" to its urban context.43 In fact, tourists, who were also expected to utilize the Marketplace, were early identified as a likely threat to its success, as they would tend to push the merchandising toward frivolousness and sameness.
Faneuil Hall Marketplace became a major attraction the day it opened in 1976. Along with the Bicentennial celebration, which included the arrival of Queen Elizabeth of England and a flotilla of Tall Ships, and the recent completion of several new office towers, among them the massive yet elegant John Hancock Tower, it signaled both the rising potential of the New Boston and its link with the historic Boston. Hotel demand grew 42 percent between 1975 and 1978.44 (At the same time, because of declining employment in manufacturing, transportation, and trade, Boston's total employment reached its post-war low, 526,563, in 1976.) Nationally, the Marketplace's success overturned widespread skepticism about urban shopping malls and inspired imitations across the country, including other Rouse malls in New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.
Twenty years later, the Marketplace remains a success. Standing at the crossroads of the financial district, Government Center, the Freedom Trail, the North End, and the waterfront, it is the most visited place in the city, with over 12 million customers annually. Yet the concern over tourism has been borne out: tourists account for more than a third of its customers and half of its revenues, while local residents and workers do relatively little retail shopping, using the Marketplace primarily for food and drink. Rising rents and large national retailers, including the Disney Store, have pushed out many of the original local merchants.45
Nevertheless, criticism of Faneuil Hall Marketplace as too theatrical or Disney-like misses a critical point:46 Good cities have always included elements of public theater, and good city planning can stimulate this theatrical realm, its aesthetic and social pleasures, through the development of active and entertaining public spaces. Despite its touristic trappings, the Marketplace still mostly succeeds on these terms. The Marketplace also succeeded in establishing a new benchmark in the design of urban public spaces, replacing the barren, windswept plaza that had dominated the previous two decades of urban development in America.
The restored Faneuil Hall is still used as a public meeting space. It has been the scene of political rallies and debates among candidates for President, governor and mayor and of forums sponsored by community groups on a wide range of public issues, including housing and homelessness. The public spaces around Faneuil Hall and the Marketplace are principally designed to stimulate shopping and consumption and are somewhat regulated (with carefully selected street performers). Thus, they are susceptible to accusations of artificiality and pandering to a purely consumptionist ethic. Nevertheless, the success of this project encouraged the development and improvement of other, arguably more authentic, public spaces based on the principles of adaptive re-use pioneered in the original Marketplace development.
But perhaps even more importantly, it was an important ingredient in the renewal of Boston's economic and civic life. Political struggles over redevelopment led to a challenge to the growth coalition's agenda and helped promote a new agenda of managed growth and economic redistribution, particularly with the election of Mayor Flynn in l983. During much of the l980s, Boston's downtown prosperity was viewed as a means to revitalize low-income and working class neighborhoods. The political struggles over linkage policies, zoning, community development, rent control, affordable housing, and other issues helped revitalize the city's civic culture.47 Boston's neighborhood life is thriving, from the annual parades in Dorchester, Allston-Brighton, and South Boston; to the renewed activity in Jamaica Plain's Olmsted-designed Arnold Arboretum and Jamaica Pond; to the Hispanic celebrations in the South End; to the remarkable efforts of community development corporations; urban gardening projects; community-based health centers; and other forms of neighborhood activism.
The City of Boston, in partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, embarked on an ambitious citywide effort in 1994 to stabilize and upgrade its neighborhood "Main Street" business districts -- a program in which building preservation is incidental to the central goal of community economic development. Public spaces, whether in the downtown core or in outlying neighborhoods, are today a key part of Boston's reputation for livability. This is important primarily for how it improves the quality of life for the city's residents, but it also has the effect of making Boston a more attractive city for visitors and tourists.
Other, federally-supported efforts are likely to have far greater positive impacts on the long-term development and use of the waterfront and harbor. These include the court-mandated $3.5 billion cleanup of Boston Harbor, which has already led to the opening of beaches and other recreational opportunities; the replacement of an elevated highway, which, when constructed in the 1950s, cut off the waterfront from downtown, with an underground artery that has opened up new possibilities for developing public space near the waterfront; and passage of legislation in 1996 creating the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area.
Finally, by the late 1990's the South Boston "Seaport District" emerged as the principal locus for the planning and development of new office, residential, and tourist facilities. Situated across a narrow channel from the Financial District, city planners and property developers hope to transform this area's abandoned piers, industrial spaces, and vacant tracts into a major extension of the "New Boston," while attempting to retain the industrial and port activities that remain. The area already contains hundreds of artist lofts, several small museums, the World Trade Center exhibition facility, and a new hotel, and is the intended site of the new convention center. If and when these plans materialize, the Seaport District will surely become a significant new feature of the Boston tourist experience.
Walter Muir Whitehill, 1959 48
The main ingredients for preserving Boston's traditional urban fabric included historic preservation, gentrification, maintenance, neighborhood mobilization, and new urban design concepts, along with city planning and corporate civic leadership that sought to reconcile these factors with the imperatives of economic growth and redevelopment. Three factors emerged in the mid-1970s to produce an economically significant tourist location. One, the economic restructuring and physical revitalization of the metropolitan region, entailed dramatic growth in business services, FIRE, health care, education, and high technology, along with a vast expansion of office space, hospitals, shopping centers, hotels, museums and modern cultural facilities. The second was increased attention to the pre-existing richness of the city's historical landmarks in connection with the United States Bicentennial celebration in 1976. Third was the movement by working and middle-class residents to maintain Boston's livability by resisting urban renewal and preserving the city's traditional urban qualities and community life.
One byproduct of Boston's expanding service sector-based economy, including its tourism and visitor sector, has been increased labor mobilization, particularly in the hotel industry. Beginning in l981, Boston's moribund Hotel and Restaurant Workers union was revitalized under the militant leadership of Dominick Bozzotto, who turned the local union around by mobilizing the predominantly female and minority membership through community organizing, confrontational tactics, and tough bargaining.49 The union also became very involved in citywide affordable housing efforts. Thus, tourism did not, as in some cities, contribute to a downgraded labor force.
This characterization is not meant to downplay Boston's many serious social and economic problems, from the polarization of incomes, to racial segregation and redlining, to such correlates of poverty as crime, homelessness, and infant mortality. Although Boston was one of the few major American cities whose poverty rate declined during the l980s, almost one-fifth of its population remained below the poverty line.50 The restructuring of the Boston region's economy, and the sharp escalation of its housing costs, exacerbated the city's problems. Some of these problems, especially the homeless population in the city's downtown areas, are quite visible to visitors and residents alike. But tourists were less likely to set foot in some of Boston's more troubled high-poverty areas such as Roxbury, Dorchester, or South Boston. At the same time, Boston's vibrant and contentious civic life, including its neighborhood activism, helped to pressure both public and private sector leaders to address these problems more forcefully than in most other cities.51
By the late 1970s, growing numbers of middle-class professional workers, tourists, and downtown business people were drawn to the city's livable environment and rich urban milieu. Private investment in preservation was given an important boost in 1976, with the enactment of the federal Historic Preservation Tax Credit program, and again in 1981 with passage of the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, which further increased tax incentives specific to rehabilitation of historic properties as well as real estate investment in general.52
Thus, by 1981, neighborhood residents, developers, architects, government planners and politicians were finding an increasing appreciation of the economic, social, and cultural values of preservation and good urban design.
The timing was propitious. The economic restructuring of the national economy required greater geographic consolidation of its corporate finance and business service functions, elevating the locational importance of key regional cities such as Boston and the pressure for new commercial development. During the 1980s, the downtown residential neighborhoods were also the locus of intensive gentrification and the restoration of older buildings, which served as a base for expanding the political constituency for preservation. The city was about to embark on its largest construction boom in more than a century. Whatever had been learned over the past three decades of urban revitalization would be put to a major test in the 1980s.
Pressure from preservationist and neighborhood interests ensured that buildings were preserved and that towers were shorter and set back from the street to minimize shadow and wind effects. Some of Boston's prominent business leaders, while strongly supportive of economic growth, understood the dangers of unchecked development and the threat of overbuilding the city's small core, helping give the city government more political room to manage development than in any major American city except, perhaps, San Francisco.
Contextual design, reduced scale, and active streetscapes became the hallmarks of Boston architecture and urban design during this era. According to the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Guide to Boston, "Boston's most significant achievement in this century may have been in urban design and planning, in integrating new architecture with that of the past and at the same time maintaining an emphasis on human scale. More than any other American City, Boston has retained or adapted its physical past while allowing new landmarks to take root...The Faneuil Hall Marketplace reuse project has become a symbol of the new Boston development philosophy." 53 From l984 through l992, the BRA, under the direction of Stephen Coyle, also implemented new zoning regulations that restricted allowable building heights in most of downtown and encouraged further preservation of the existing building stock. There was remarkably little opposition to these initiatives by real estate and business interests.54 Edwin Sidman, chairman of Beacon Properties, which owns many downtown properties including two hotels, commented that "the zoning made eminently good sense. Cities don't operate well on a boom and bust mentality. Boston doesn't need to sell itself out." Because much of downtown still consisted of buildings constructed during the late 19th and early 20th century, even many real estate owners supported efforts to maintain their increasingly profitable older buildings and reduce the impact of new developments.
Boston's mixed-use development and planning ties into a broader strategy of increasing the number of hours the city is open. Where single-use projects and districts empty out when their primary function is over, mixed-use projects and districts retain vitality over a wider period of time, as workers, residents, shoppers, theater-goers, and visitors exchange places and cross paths while using many of the same sidewalks, subways, shops, restaurants, etc. Public safety, a key to the urban quality of life, is also enhanced with greater activity throughout the day. Thus, economic activity is increased by expanding and intensifying the use of time rather than space: a sensible and sustainable strategy for pursing economic growth in a city where new development is difficult and often undesirable.
In the past, as we have emphasized, little effort has gone into planning or developing alternative growth strategies for tourism. As a result, tourism has largely stayed within the same boundaries and spaces as everyday life, sharing its amenities and attractions with the city's residents and workers, supporting business growth, and contributing to the retention of a large middle-class population. Future tourist development that follows this integrated and balanced path is surely the preferred course. Yet it is presently uncertain what the effects will be of the projected new growth in tourism.
Boston's tourist economy tends to be constrained by regional growth patterns. Since l980, growth in visitation to Boston has lagged behind national trends;56 this trend is largely tied to the relatively slow rate of economic and population growth in the Northeastern United States. In 1995, for example, while national tourism grew by 8 percent, in Massachusetts it grew just 1 percent and Boston, by just 3 percent.57 A regional recession between l989 and l992 with an 11 percent drop in city employment was accompanied by an even sharper fall-off in hotel employment.
While the new convention center now in development may help increase the number of convention visitors to the Boston, the long-term growth of the city's convention market is unpredictable. In addition, the new center will not affect leisure tourism's principal reliance on regional economic growth. Boston's tourism and economic development leaders seek to increase the city's share of national and international tourism. If they want to capitalize on the long term growth of this market, however, they must give greater attention to those qualities that will have the broadest and most enduring appeal, namely the city's historic and cultural heritage.
This is not to suggest that the old city should be treated as a museum piece. But a more vigilant stance in favor of preservation and history will likely broaden and sustain the city's appeal to the world's growing tourist market. Otherwise, economic forces, which until now have energized the visitor industry, can, in time, also generate more demolition and overdevelopment and thereby erode the aesthetic and historic qualities that visitors find so attractive.
Boston's modern visitor industry, which arose during a period of uncommon prosperity, has not needed to concern itself with planning, or product development. In its brief twenty year existence, it has benefitted enormously from both economic growth and historic preservation. Yet industry leaders have not come to believe they have a compelling interest in organizing to protect the city's unique historical and architectural heritage. In the early 1990's, demolition continued in the Midtown Cultural District, along the Freedom Trail and in the historic theater district.58 As in virtually all of the city's preservation conflicts, tourist industry leaders have been absent from these debates.
Arthur Frommer, a leading authority on tourism, draws on the European experience as a guide for American cities: "Because of historic preservation and only because of historic preservation, the travel industry is now the single largest industry in Europe."59 It was only the cities with "draconian measures in support of preservation" that obtained their status as leading tourist destinations, says Frommer, while cities such as Brussels and Milan, which did not adequately protect their historic environments, became touristic backwaters.
Boston's tourism leaders do not agree with Frommer's hard line on preservation and, up to a point, they are right. The nature of postwar urban development in the United States made it unlikely that Boston could have regained its economic vitality were it constrained by "draconian" historic preservation laws. And Boston's success has been largely tied to the unique integration of its new developments with the old. Boston was also lucky that many of its historic building were "saved" by a period of prolonged economic stagnation during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s and that urban redevelopment did not start too soon or progress too far before public sentiment and support for preservation took root.
Over the long term Frommer may be right, however. While the future growth of the city and regional economy cannot be predicted, the historical and cultural value of the city's built environment seems more certain: along with the largely untapped potential of Boston Harbor, it is what truly distinguishes the city and provides its competitive advantage in tourism. Over the long term it can be presumed that these qualities will take on even greater significance.
The recent symbiosis between growth and preservation is tenuous. Redevelopment has already claimed large parts of the city; the balance cannot be maintained if new development is permitted to slowly eat away at the historic downtown core. Tourism, real estate, and government leaders, who have yet to fully acknowledge the unique and irreplaceable value of the city's older streetscapes, may some day find that in the pursuit of short-term growth strategies the city has sacrificed the long-term potential of its cultural heritage and the possibility of a more sustainable visitor and tourist economy.
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2 Travel and Leisure (1996); Condé Nast Traveler (1996).
3 Gans (1962); Mollenkopf (1983); Boston Urban Study Group (1984); Ehrlich (1987); Kennedy (1992); O'Connor (1993).
4 See Meyerson and Banfield (1966), who did not even mention tourism in their treatise on Boston's renewal program.
5 Completions of new office space averaged over 800,000 square feet annually between 1965 and 1974, and reached a high of 5.2 million square feet in 1975. Economic growth and new construction continued through the 1980s. Between 1960 and 1985, more than 20 million square feet of office space were added to Boston, almost doubling the quantity of available space. Between 1950 and 1990, total employment in Boston increased by 13%, from 550,719 to 622,433; employment in FIRE and Services grew by 150%, from 140,921 to 352,963; and employment in all other sectors dropped by 39%, from 409,798 to 251,134.
6 See Cohen (1981); and Stanback (1985).
7 Massachusetts ranks fourteenth among states in domestic travel expenditures and sixth among states visited by foreign tourists. Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism (1996).
8 Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau (1995), p. 5 and (1997),
9 Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau (1995), p. 12.
10 Avault (1996).
11 Interview with Robert Ryan (1987).
12 Campbell (1995).
13 Thompson (1994); see also Sorkin (1992).
14 Northeastern University (1967), p. 211.
15 Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism (1996).
16 McPhee (1996). One nightclub catering to foreign students even banned domestic patrons.
17 Mayor's Office of the Boston Bicentennial (1973), p. 1:9.
18 Wilson (1996).
19 Boston National Historical Park (1994).
20 Whitehill (1968); O'Connor (1993).
21 Boston National Historic Sites Commission (1960).
22 Northeastern University (1967).
23 United States Bicentennial World Exposition Corporation (1969), p. VII-14.
24 Mayor's Office of the Boston Bicentennial (1973).
25 Boston National Historical Park (1974).
26 Dixon/Goody Clancy (1995), p. 7.
27 Gans (1962).
28 Kennedy (1992).
29 O'Connor (1993).
30 Seifel (1979), p. 38. Back Bay and Beacon Hill also lost thousands of lodging house units to private market conversion during this time: in all, more than 90% of Boston's single room units, or approximately 25,000 units, were lost between 1960 and 1985.
31 McDonough (1996), Bok (1996).
32 Quoted in Historic Boston (1992), p. 42
33 Lupo, et al. (1971); Kennedy (1992).
34 King (1981); Brown (1987).
35 Dreier and Ehrlich (1991).
36 See Dreier (1996).
37 Sorkin (1992), p. xv.
38 Frieden and Sagalyn (1989), p. 107.
39 Boston Redevelopment Authority (1964).
40 Brown (1987).
41 O'Connor (1993).
42 Sagalyn (1989).
43 Thompson (1979).
44 Boston Redevelopment Authority (1992), p. 14
45 Clements (1996).
46 Hall (1988).
47 Dreier and Ehrlich (1991); Dreier (1993).
48 Whitehill (1968), pp. 197-198.
49 Dreier (1983a); Kahn (1988, 1989).
50 Glickman, et. al (1996); Osterman (1991)
51 See Dreier (1996)
52 Avault (1985).
53 Southworth (1984), pp. x-xi.
54 Schauppner (1987).
55 In stunning contradiction to the central themes presented here -- the public and authentic nature of Boston's tourist attractions -- a lavish banquet held for the American Society of Association Executives (who select convention locations) during their 1996 convention in Boston led to the enclosure of a street and public park in Copley Square. The park was set as a miniaturized re-creation of the Public Garden, pond and swans included, though the original was just three blocks away. The people of the city were denied entrance to this private party in the "Public Garden."
56 Dixon/Goody Clancy (1995).
57 Ackerman (1996), Greater Boston Convention and Visitor Bureau (1997).
58 King (1989); The Boston Globe (1995).
59 Frommer (1988), p. 10.
* A version of this paper will appear in D. Judd and S. Fainstein (eds.), Places to Play: The Remaking of Cities for Tourists, Yale University Press, 1998.
Bruce Ehrlich
Department of Neighborhood Development
City of Boston
Peter Dreier
Occidental College