A Better City

??? ?? The B-COOL temperature sensor team was thrilled to gather with our community partners, city and state agencies, and colleague organizations at The Boston Foundation this morning to discuss the initial results of our 2024 temperature sensor pilot! Thanks to our #BCOOL team, we confirmed significant differences of temperatures are being felt both within and across heat island hotspot neighborhoods during high heat events in the summer, and that community-informed data can be powerful in driving community-driven solutions. Get in touch to learn more about our findings and if you are interested in partnering with us on community-based heat solutions! Thanks to our B-COOL partners: Boston University School of Public Health City of Boston The Boston Foundation Read the full press release here: https://shorturl.at/GTqtV

In 2024, A Better City worked alongside our members —and with the Healey-Driscoll Administration, State Legislature, and Wu Administration—to develop solutions to some of Greater Boston’s most pressing challenges—from transportation and infrastructure needs, to land use and development opportunities, to energy and environmental concerns. We enter 2025 with a renewed focus on advancing the policies and projects needed to create a more vibrant, competitive, sustainable, and equitable city and region for all.?Check out our full 2024 Year in Review below.

On January 14, Governor Maura Healey announced a plan to make historic investments in the state’s roads, bridges, and regional transportation system and immediately stabilize the finances of the MBTA. The investments—representing $8 billion over the next 10 years—would be done without raising taxes and represent the largest state transportation investment in more than 20 years by creating an expanded financing plan involving Fair Share revenue. ? The plan will be filed as legislation in the coming weeks as part of the Governor’s Fiscal Year 2026 (FY26) state budget proposal and a separate supplemental budget. These bills would put into action many of the recommendations made in the Transportation Funding Task Force final report. The Task Force proposes multiple steps for stabilizing and enhancing transportation in 2025, while setting the stage for how best to finance transformative investments in transportation in the future. ? "The central recommendations put forward by the Transportation Funding Task Force are strategic, fiscally responsible, and actionable—and Governor Healey's budget proposal takes immediate action to implement many of these recommendations by directing historic levels of investment to stabilize our statewide transportation infrastructure. By prioritizing the equitable use of Fair Share surtax revenue and utilizing federal funding, the Governor's proposal reflects the Task Force's tactical approach to expeditiously direct billions of dollars in capital and operating funding to support the MBTA and RTAs, while also investing in critical roadway infrastructure in municipalities across the state. Thank you to Governor Healey and her team for convening this Task Force, for giving A Better City the opportunity to serve, and for confronting our transportation crisis head on. We look forward to working with the Healey-Driscoll Administration, Legislature, business community, and transportation advocates in the coming weeks and months to build a stronger, more competitive statewide transportation system and regional economy." — Kate Dineen, President & CEO of A Better City You can read the Governor’s press release: https://lnkd.in/e9JdqDZt

On Tuesday we convened members and experts for our final event of 2024 "Investing in Our Commuter Rail, Investing in Our Future"

Earlier this week,?A Better City convened the region's civic and business leaders at the Boston Harbor Hotel for the annual?Norman B. Leventhal Excellence in City Building Awards. Named in memory of A Better City’s founding director, the Norman B. Leventhal Awards recognize the leaders and innovators who have made significant contributions to our built environment. We were so grateful to host our indefatigable Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll who delivered remarks to recognize the achievements of our awardees and to discuss the Healey-Driscoll Administration's vision for building a more equitable, affordable, and competitive Commonwealth for all. Our program also included A Better City Board Chair James Tierney, A Better City Treasurer Jeanne Pinado, Faros Properties' Alex Leventhal, and past awardees Alex Krieger, Katherine F. Abbott, and Rick Dimino. James Keefe and Patrick Lee, Principals at Trinity Financial, Inc., were jointly honored with the Distinguished Leader Award for their pioneering leadership in community-driven urban development. Keefe and Lee co-founded Trinity in 1987 with the mission of developing transformative housing projects in both physically and environmentally challenged urban infill locations. Dr. S. Atyia Martin, CEO and Founder, All Aces Inc, was honored with the Environment Award for championing climate justice throughout her career, including intentionally imbedding equity into climate resilience. John Sullivan, Chief Engineer of the Boston Water & Sewer Commission, was honored with the Land Use Award for his leadership in creating the critical drinking water and wastewater infrastructure needed to enable development and environmental protection. Gautam Sundaram, Practice Leader, Principal, ASLA, Perkins&Will, and Kishore Varanasi, AICP, Senior Principal and Director of Urban Design at CBT Architects, were jointly honored with the Transportation Award for their pro-bono efforts to illustrate the benefits of the I-90 Allston Multimodal Project. During uncertain times, the event was an opportunity to pause and to celebrate an accomplished and diverse slate of leaders that are continuing to build a better city for all. Thank you to the many folks who made this event possible, including Host Committee Co-Chairs Elizabeth Grob and David Manfredi FAIA, LEED AP, Dusty Rhodes and Conventures, Inc., Lynn Scornavacca and Silverlake Productions, and A Better City’s Leann Kosior and Betty Sullivan. Finally, thank you to our event sponsors, without whom this event would be impossible! Be sure to check out our event sponsors and full program here: https://lnkd.in/etWDx_ut

For the past two and a half years, A Better City and its members have partnered with the City of Boston’s new workforce development training program, PowerCorpsBOS, to develop and implement a building operations program track. The goal is to develop a viable pathway for 18-30 years old Boston residents to train, intern, and gain employment in Boston’s large buildings—filling a critical workforce gap in large building operations and facilities. The PowerCorpsBOS building operations cohorts ran from January-June 2023 and July-December 2023, with the third cohort running from May 2024-March 2025. A Better City has learned several lessons that have been applied to future trainings, and we hope may be useful for other new or existing equitable workforce development programs. We are excited to share these lessons with you: Building Our Future: Lessons Learned from Partnering with the PowerCorpsBOS Building Operations Training Program #powercorpsbos #buildingoperations #workforcetraining

#powercorpsbos #buildingoperations

ICYMI: Check out A Better City President & CEO in Bloomberg! “We can make the system better,” said Kate Dineen, chief executive officer of A Better City , which represents the interests of about 130 business leaders on transportation and development issues. “But in order to do that, we’re going to need substantial new investments in the MBTA.” #publictransit #mbta #bostonpoli

As the City of Boston continues to see record- breaking heat, the Boston Globe dove into how heat impacts our neighborhoods, and the issues of Boston being a heat island and the impacts of redlining. “If you overlay Boston’s heat maps with maps of formerly redlined neighborhoods, it’s pretty striking, the overlap that’s there and the correlation that’s there,” said Isabella Gambill, the assistant director of climate, energy, and resilience at A Better City , an environment and infrastructure-focused nonprofit in Boston. Thank you to our dedicated partners and project co-leads: The Boston Foundation, Boston University School of Public Health, and the City of Boston Environment Department! Read more about extreme heat, and the research A Better City is supporting through their Extreme Heat Temperature Sensor Pilot Project. #mapoli #extremeheat #heatisland #redlining

At a time when all eyes (real or googly) are on the MBTA,?we should be rooting for our shared success. Under general manager Phil Eng’s leadership, the MBTA has made important progress toward addressing some of the system’s most pressing safety, staffing, and service challenges impacting riders and our region. ? To encourage this progress, we should work together to ensure that the T has the resources needed to address a staggering “state of good repair” backlog and to further modernize, decarbonize, and fortify the system — the future of our region depends on it. Check out the Letter to the Editor from A Better City's Kate Dineen?in today's Boston Globe Media.?