Boston Mayor Marty Walsh just revealed Resilient Boston Harbor, a landmark initiative for making coastal resilience a focus for the City of Boston. To bring the vision to life, Bostonians will need to show the city they care, and keep city agencies accountable.

Resilient Boston Harbor is a transformative, climate-resilient vision for Boston’s 47-mile coastline. The city will bolster its harbor with carefully engineered infrastructure like seawalls and raised roadways. But Bostonians will barely notice these structures, which will disappear into a greener, more accessible, and culturally meaningful waterfront.

Residents will see the city harness nature-based solutions and coastal ecosystems by restoring 122 acres of parks and tidal areas and adding 67 acres of park space. Marsh restoration and park elevation will buffer the city from sea level rise and storm surges. The city will add vegetated berms to the shoreline—small hills that are essentially earthen floodwalls. Even concrete structures like floodwalls will be disguised as terraced seating in parks or as harborwalks that give people direct access to the ocean.

The bottom line is that Resilient Boston Harbor recognizes the city’s deep ties to the waterfront. Bostonians want to maintain and strengthen their connection to the sea. They also want security in the face of climate change. Resilient Boston Harbor does both: it uses sensible and effective nature-based solutions to make the shoreline more resilient and more accessible.

Resilient Boston Harbor Vision. Image Courtesy Environment Department, City of Boston

Making Boston Harbor resilient is more important now than ever before. Last winter, a strong nor’easter wreaked havoc in Boston’s streets, causing unprecedented flooding. The National Guard had to rescue 50 people in Quincy, a city suburb. Kayakers paddled down streets, taking in the scene. Sea level rise, stronger storms, and extreme temperatures are already taking a toll on Boston.

Projections show the situation will only get worse: by 2070, areas that currently only see coastal flooding during major storms will experience regular, monthly flooding at the highest tides. Even in the short term, from 2030 to 2050, one major storm alone could inundate the homes of 16,000 Bostonians and cause $2.3 billion in damages.

In 2016, the city responded to these dire projections by establishing a new wing of the Environment Department called Climate Ready Boston. The Climate Ready Boston program will oversee the implementation of Resilient Boston Harbor.

Two years after its creation, Climate Ready Boston has devised several neighborhood resilience plans. Working at the neighborhood level, Climate Ready Boston held community open houses, conducted interviews, and circulated online surveys for residents of Charlestown, East Boston, and South Boston. From these community conversations, focused on brainstorming and input, sprung two resilience plans, one for Charleston and East Boston, and the other for South Boston.

Alisha Pegan, Coordinator for Climate Ready Boston, explains, “while we have a general sense of what’s going on with the landscape, we don’t have the on-ground experience.” That’s why Boston takes citizen input to heart, and knows that the success of Resilient Boston Harbor depends on what citizens need, want, and envision for their communities.

In South Boston, the Moakley Park redesign exemplifies how the city is already engaging citizens to make Resilient Boston Harbor a reality. Moakley Park is at grade with the beach, and is susceptible to flooding that immediately impacts three Boston housing projects as well as the surrounding neighborhood.

The planning process for Moakley Park ends in December 2018, and has depended on citizen input. Community engagement events stimulated conversation about Moakley Park’s future. People provided input like “we envision multi-sport facilities and community gardens, not dog parks and artificial turf.” They brainstormed ideas for making the park more accessible, as four and six-lane roads currently isolate the park from surrounding neighborhoods. Most recently, people ranked their preference for resilience options like sloped lawns, tree groves, and wetlands. The results aren’t public yet, but they’ll inform the final redesign plan.

As the city forges ahead with Resilient Boston Harbor, community engagement will be central to planning. Citizens need to engage with the city to transform Resilient Boston Harbor from vision to reality.

If you live, work, or go to school in the Boston area, get involved and push the city to live up to its promise of a resilient future.

• Call the Mayor’s Office and thank Mayor Marty Walsh for releasing Resilient Boston Harbor. Emphasize your concern for what climate change holds in store for Boston, and that your life and the lives of all Bostonians depend on making Resilient Boston Harbor a reality.
• Call Parks and Recreation about Moakley Park. Thank them for working with Climate Ready Boston to engage citizens about the future of the park, but that you want to see a concrete plan released soon, and a contractor hired by the end of 2019.
• Sign up for your neighborhood newsletter so you can stay in the loop. Getting involved in your neighborhood network will give you avenues to start making change and showing you care. If you live in Downtown or Dorchester, be on the lookout for Climate Ready Boston open houses in 2019. Sign up for your newsletter so you don’t miss them!