Policy
problem: How to protect wild land within Boston from development?
The 143 open spaces that make up the
Boston Urban Wilds were identified by the Boston Redevelopment
Authority’s 1976 report Boston Urban Wilds: A Natural
Areas Conservation Program. These 2000 acres of undeveloped
land throughout the city were defined by the report as “areas
of land or water that have retained or re-established considerable
natural character even though they may not be completely undisturbed.” In addition to defining and locating the Urban Wilds, the report also outlined a process for protecting
these sites from development through transfer between city agencies, zoning, and purchase from private property owners. The process
outlined is a rational approach to solving the problem of urban
land conservation in which city agencies are identified as the
most feasible avenue to removing these properties from the real
estate market and a linear series of purchases or transfers
was envisioned (BRA, 1976).
Adhering to the rational problem solving model advocated
by the 1976 report, several of the largest and most ecologically
significant Urban Wilds were purchased by the Boston Conservation
Commission in the years following the report’s
publication and over the next three decades, approximately
40 Urban Wilds owned by Boston city agencies were transferred
to either the Conservation Commission or the Parks and Recreation
Department. The report also spurred the establishment of the
Boston Natural Areas Network (originally the Boston Natural
Areas Fund) to advocate for the Urban Wilds that remained unprotected
from development. Through the work of the Parks Department,
the Conservation Commission, and BNAN, the network of Urban
Wilds, while somewhat decreased from in area since 1976, remains
robust today, three decades after the publication of Urban Wilds:
A Natural Areas Conservation Program.
Due to competition for scarce resources
within the city budget, the management of the Urban Wilds has
not matched the enthusiasm voiced by the 1976 report. The current
management model was formalized in the late 1990’s with
the creation of the Urban Wilds Initiative within the Parks
Department, now staffed by one individual. The Urban Wilds Initiative has in turn partnered
with Earthworks, a small non-profit dedicated to engaging urban
residents in the natural environment, to maintain the city-owned
Urban Wilds through volunteer labor. Both the Urban Wilds Initiative
and Earthworks focus their attention on neighborhoods in which
a friends group for a given Urban Wild already exists or can easily
be organized due to existing interest in the community (personal interviews, Paul Sutton and Benjamin Crouch).
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