IT’S FINALLY springtime in Boston. The grass is green, trees are leafing, and the birds are back. It’s a time for rebirth and renewal. This particular spring seems an especially long time coming, after two years of a global pandemic. The long winter of COVID-19 brought death, devastation, and disruption to so many facets of our lives. As we begin to reemerge and create new routines while living with the uncertainty of an endemic, we cannot go back to all the old ways of doing things.

The Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC), the regional planning agency for Greater Boston, was actively involved helping municipalities and the Commonwealth respond to the pandemic over the past two years. Even during this time, we kept an eye on the future we wanted to build beyond the crisis. With a creative approach involving virtual meetings, hybrid focus groups, and collaborative, remote research, we led an inclusive planning process to create a forward-thinking, long-term plan for our future. Dubbed “MetroCommon 2050,” it offers a menu of programmatic and policy changes needed at the state and local level to ensure a more equitable, resilient, and prosperous future for the 4 million people who will likely call Greater Boston home by mid-century.

Thousands of people who live and work in Greater Boston told us they want a region that is prepared for the impacts of climate change, provides a fair opportunity to buy a home, and offers everyone – regardless of race, income, and other socio-economic factors – a path to build a happy life. Based on these values, we examined some of the greatest threats to our long-term wellbeing, from housing and climate to racial segregation and income inequality.

Working with state and local leaders and with people most affected by these issues, we created a plan that places us on the trajectory to success – one rooted in equity, sustainability, and prosperity for all. Informed by meetings, surveys, and interviews with people throughout the metropolitan area, we identified a series of bold, achievable goals for the 101 cities and towns within the MAPC’s planning territory, along with useful research and tools to ensure success.

Examples of actions we can, collectively, take to prepare our region and its people for whatever the future holds include:

  • Increase resources for first-time homebuyers, especially homebuyers of color, as home ownership is a major mechanism for building and passing on wealth;
  • Build on the fare-free bus pilots in Boston by expanding means-tested fares to the entirety of the MBTA system;
  • Create a regional climate infrastructure bank that invests in neighborhoods most at risk to the impacts of climate change and where residents and businesses have limited financial resiliency; and
  • Pilot cross-sector collaborations that include private, non-profit, and municipal partners tackling issues together.

To achieve these and myriad other goals articulated in MetroCommon 2050, state leaders, regional agencies, cities and towns, and the private and non-profit sectors must work together. This work will be neither easy nor inexpensive, but together we can create an equitable and resilient region. We should use the once-in-a-generation federal pandemic recovery funds to make a downpayment on the investments needed to realize the future residents and workers say they want and need.

We learned while responding to the pandemic that collaboration spawns creativity, ingenuity, and problem-solving. To create the Greater Boston we envision, we must sustain and direct this momentum to turn the many challenges we face into opportunities to build a more equitable and sustainable region.

MetroCommon 2050 is a blueprint of hope for the future, an adamant statement that all of us – community groups, state and local officials, and the business community – can overcome the polarization we see across our nation to create the future we need, and our children deserve. Throughout the spring and summer, we will be presenting our work to select boards, city councils, citizen action organizations, and business groups throughout the region. We hope to hear from many communities interested in learning more.

While no one knows what the future will bring, we do know global and national trends and events will continue to impact Greater Boston. We have the ability and capacity to adapt to these forces and meet our region’s challenges directly, and MetroCommon offers a blueprint for doing so. We just need to put our heads together, find places of common ground, and harness the will for bold, innovative action.

Erin Wortman is president of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council and Eric Hove is the council’s director of strategic initiatives.