The plan was drafted and adopted by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC), the regional planning agency for the people who live and work in the 101 cities and towns of Metropolitan Boston, but its real authors are over 4,500 people and organizations who helped to write the plan – we call them “plan builders .” Through countless meetings, conversations, emails, and consultations, they created not only the strategic direction for this plan, but its details and nuances as well. To them go our thanks, and upon their shoulders rest the responsibility and opportunity of implementation. Without their active engagement, there would be no MetroFuture plan. The plan can only be realized through their ongoing commitment to advocate for regionally minded choices at town meetings and in city council chambers, in boardrooms and on Beacon Hill. 

The state statute that created MAPC in 1963 requires the agency to “prepare and, from time to time, revise both comprehensive regional plans and comprehensive economic development programs…including recommendations for the physical, social and economic improvement” of the region.  The last such plan, MetroPlan, was adopted in 1990. When MAPC began the process to update that plan in 2003, it took a new approach.  With the assistance of a broadly representative Process Design Committee, MAPC defined a process that included technical planning, civic engagement, and implementation in equal measures.

The process has been guided by a Steering Committee comprising representatives from government, nonprofits, institutions, business, and advocacy organizations. MAPC retained fiduciary and supervisory control over the budget and staff.

Similar planning processes, each with its own distinct flavor, have been conducted in Utah, Metropolitan Chicago, central Florida, Lower Manhattan, the San Francisco Bay area, and other parts of the country – but never before in Metropolitan Boston.  MAPC studied these processes for successes and, lessons learned, we hope MetroFuture can also serve as a model to other parts of the country. 

The founders of the project also established a set of key principles that inform the civic engagement process, the technical analysis, the evaluation of alternatives, and the recommendations of MetroFuture:

• A set of critical resources, opportunities, and challenges unites the people and communities of Metropolitan Boston. We cannot confront the problems that face us unless we work together to devise and implement a unified approach that crosses political, social, economic, and cultural boundaries. Active public participation and open dialogue will yield a stronger regional plan, a constituency united behind implementation, and greater understanding, identification, and pursuit of common goals.
   
• We embrace the opportunities of growth and development, while seeking to maintain and enhance the beauty and uniqueness of the Greater Boston region and our individual communities. 
  
  
• We recognize inequalities that persist in the Metropolitan region and seek concrete steps to achieve greater regional equity as a component of strong and just growth.
  
  
• All planning and public policy decisions should be evaluated in terms of their impacts upon economy, environment, community, and equity.
  
  
• We want a vision that is bold, and a plan that is compelling and implementable.  While we seek consensus, we insist that the elements of our plan be significant. We recognize that Metropolitan Boston faces serious challenges, and we know these challenges can only be overcome by deliberate and decisive action.