The Citistates Report for Boston was unveiled May 26 at a major luncheon sponsored by the Boston College Citizens Seminar which celebrated its 50th anniversary. Boston’s Mayor Thomas Menino joined hosts — Boston Foundation president Paul Grogan and Boston College’s Father Donald Monan, to celebrate and mark the event.
Printed by the Boston Globe, the report — Boston Unbound: Tapping Greater Boston’s Assets and Talents to Create a World-Leading Citistate (PDF-24pgs) — hails the Boston region’s world-class intellectual assets but warns of complacency. It challenges the region to tackle major issues ranging from perils to its healthcare sector to emerging growth options, an expanded regional leadership role for universities to the idea of “smart energy” as a spark for the area’s future.
“This is a heads-up,” Speaker Finneran told the Boston Globe. “This is about the future of the whole state, from Boston to the Berkshires, and my greatest concern is complacency.”
The report’s findings sparked a series of articles in the Boston Herald touching on leadership, healthcare and workforce. It also highlighted the report’s “Paradox Place,” sidebar citing contradictory characteristics of a region that features “thousands of humble people in a culture hard-wired for hubris.”
The Boston Business Journal noted that Peirce and Johnson found a sophisticated and fragmented power structure that struggles to make the most of its many assets. The editorial concluded, “Some fear Massachusetts will wake up in 10 years and find that it has lost many of its competitive advantages. Reports such as Citistates’ help us think past long-held, stratified boundaries that hold us back.”
In its descriptive press release, The Boston Foundation, sponsor of the project concludes, that it “intends to hold a series of ongoing discussions on Boston Unbound over the next several months as a way to engage civic leaders in looking for ways to act on the report’s findings.”