3 takeaways from Mayor Wu’s New York Times Magazine interview

Politics

The Boston mayor was asked about several topics, including her plans to “abolish” the BPDA.

For a Bostonian, Mayor Michelle Wu seems to be pretty popular in New York — or at least in the New York Times newsroom.

Last month, Wu got a publicity bump from the newspaper in a column with a playful headline: “Does the Democratic Party Want Swagger? Or Does It Want Michelle Wu?”

This month, the newspaper’s magazine went deep on a few of the issues with Wu in an interview published Sunday. The headline offered up another bold question: “Mayor Michelle Wu Wants to Change Boston. But Can Boston Change?”

Staff writer David Marchese peppered Wu with questions on affordability, housing, plans to “abolish” the Boston Planning and Development Agency, political risk taking, and fare-free public transit, among other issues.

Here are a few highlights from their conversation:

1. 800,000 is a number that stands out in Wu’s mind.

Boston is a city on the rise.

Even if Wu’s Administration is currently challenging the 2020 U.S. Census count (alleging Boston was undercounted), it’s clear Boston’s population has only grown in recent years, starting what looks like a potential rebound from a decline over the second half of the 20th century.

But Boston’s population growth comes as the city continues to face housing and affordability crises amid a wave of new development rising in the city.

Marchese asked Wu about opportunities for city leaders to help make Boston more livable for working-class people and their families.

Wu was well aware of the Hub’s growing pains.

“We will never be successful as long as the challenge is how to most fairly or least painfully allocate a shrinking pie or even one that is of a fixed size,” she said. “We have to grow it. That’s uniquely challenging in Boston. You could count on one hand the spaces that are left for major development, unlike other parts of the country where there is more landmass available.”

And one population statistic in particular stands out in Wu’s mind.

“I have in my head the number 800,000, which was the peak of Boston’s population in the 1950s,” the mayor said. “We have been climbing back but still are at or under 700,000. So the question is: How do we ensure that we can be a green and growing city that’s healthy and affordable for everyone? We need to have the infrastructure to be able to support getting back to that height of our population with growth that is equitable and sustainable.”

(The figure drew some skepticism from several New York Times commenters, including one from Massachusetts who wrote, “Maybe figure out how to house and transport the people already here first.”)

Wu went on to highlight a city land audit to identify where City Hall could build affordable housing on publicly owned land.

“We’re rethinking the whole process of how planning, development and zoning happens,” she said.

2. Wu’s plan to abolish the BPDA is still in play.

Wu has long explained her belief in the need for overhauling the city’s zoning status quo to meet Boston’s need for more affordable housing.

Wu first broached the idea of abolishing the city’s Planning and Development Agency as a city councilor in 2019 — and made clear again to Marchese her plans are still on the table.

Marchese asked Wu if part of “rethinking the whole process of how planning, development and zoning happens” includes taking apart the agency and, after gently pressing her, Wu replied: “Yes. The answer is yes.”

“We have a planning and development system that is still basically what was created in the 1950s and ’60s in an era of trying to tackle blight and focusing on the downtown areas,” Wu said. “Today Boston is in a very different place, and we have needs that are just as dire, and so we need to reorient our systems and governments to focus on resiliency, equity and affordability.

“That involves separating planning and development and empowering planning to be connected with how we think about climate and transportation and housing,” she said.

3. Wu said her decision to make three MBTA bus routes free is ‘in some ways a risk.’

Ask Wu to name a risk she’s taken in office and she’ll quickly have an answer.

After all, it’s the first thing she did as mayor.

Wu pointed to her request for funding from the City Council to make three bus routes fare-free when asked about a “real risk” she’s taken. Wu made the ask of her former council colleagues the day after she was sworn in last year.

“I advocated for a program like this over the years, and we had been told this could not happen — that the system would be overrun and unable to accommodate the demand; that this would somehow lead to devaluing the service if anyone could just get on and ride,” Wu said. “We had to work through weeks of negotiating all the way up to the Federal Transit Administration and Secretary [Pete] Buttigieg about getting the rules clearly defined and determining that this was something that could proceed — and did it!”

The three lines — the 28 bus, the 23 bus, and the 29 bus — were made free in part through $8 million Boston received under the federal American Rescue Plan Act.

Asked by Marchese about that funding running out, Wu detailed that the $8 million will fund the program through the next two years, and that the remainder of the city’s approximately $350 million in federal funds “most likely have to be spent between 2025 and 2026.”

“This is in some ways a risk that we are taking to prove and make tangible the impacts of a different way of doing things so that we can make the case for increased investment from the state and federal government or a new revenue source at the city level,” Wu said.

Marchese also questioned Wu about the impact of the fare-free transit program: “Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t it determined that the first of the free transit lines was by and large not saving people money because most riders had to transfer to get to the free lines?”

Wu responded by saying about a third of the people commuting on the bus lines used only the bus “and therefore directly saved on their fares.”

“That number can seem small if you’re looking at it like 33 out of 100 percent, but for the 33 percent of community members who now are fully plugged into job opportunities, getting to and from Roxbury Community College and child care and social meetings with friends and family, that makes a big difference,” Wu said. “You know, it’s not all or nothing.”

Read the full New York Times Magazine interview.