Boston – The Boston Planning & Development Agency’s (BPDA) planning team recently released A Guide to PLAN: Mattapan’s Transportation Planning and the Development Review Process.
This guide is part of a larger BPDA initiative to build a more inclusive planning process and ensure plans and their implementations reflect the perspectives of a diverse group of stakeholders. It seeks to explain and illustrate government processes and equip residents, workers, and small business owners of Mattapan with planning concepts so they are able to better navigate and participate in these initiatives.
The guide provides information on transportation planning, specifically why planning is happening now and how city priorities influence the process. It also highlights elements of street design that address underlying issues like safety, accessibility, and reliability that residents have raised throughout the PLAN: Mattapan process. The guide includes solutions from the Boston Transportation Department’s Street Safety Toolkit, which directly address many of the underlying issues that have been shared through PLAN: Mattapan. The guide also includes an overview of the Article 80 Development review process, including how community members can get involved.
With the community’s help, PLAN: Mattapan will produce a neighborhood plan with specific recommendations that will guide future transportation projects and development proposals. As PLAN: Mattapan begins drafting preliminary recommendations, this guide will serve as a helpful tool as the community joins conversations around transportation goals, infrastructure, and access.
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The BPDA is leading an unprecedented number of planning studies alongside Boston’s communities, each guided by Imagine Boston 2030, the first city-wide master plan in 50 years aimed at guiding growth.
The full guide is also available in Spanish and Haitian Creole and is posted on the BPDA’s website.
