A Better City

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. 

Thank you to Sasaki for hosting todays Decarb Boston Conference where our own Yve Torrie, CC-P moderated the panel on "Pragmatic Solutions to Buildings Decarbonization in Boston". This informative panel included Joelle Jahn from Jaros, Baum & Bolles, Catie Ball from Trane and Colin Schless LEED, CPHC from Turner Construction Company.

A Better City was thrilled to launch our extreme heat temperature sensor pilot project in Chinatown earlier this week, in partnership with the City of Boston Environment Department, The Boston Foundation, Boston University School of Public Health, and fabulous community partners like Ben Hires of the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center! Through this project, we are deploying 15 temperature sensors throughout Boston, focusing on the heat island environmental justice communities of Chinatown, Dorchester, East Boston, Mattapan, and Roxbury as highlighted in Boston’s Heat Plan, as well as Allston-Brighton and Jamaica Plain. We hope to build upon the work of Wicked Hot Boston, C-HEAT, and community-based leadership to learn more about differences in lived heat experiences. Email: bostonheatsensors@gmail.com with any questions and stay tuned for the results and write-up of the pilot project to come this fall.

In today’s CommonWealth Beacon, A Better City 's Kate Dineen and Conservation Law Foundation 's Bradley M. Campbell say the time is now for the I-90 Allston project. #mapoli

Two weeks ago A Better City released its 2023 Year in Review report: In 2023, A Better City worked collaboratively with the business community, with advocates, and with leaders in the State House and City Hall to tackle some of Greater Boston’s most pressing challenges—from transportation and infrastructure needs, to land use and development opportunities, to energy and environmental concerns. As we enter 2024, we are steadfastly focused on advancing the policies and projects needed to strengthen our region’s economic competitiveness and to build a better city and region for all. Read the full report here: https://shorturl.at/djtW2 #bospoli #abettercity #advocacy #boston