We need to walk and chew gum when it comes to planning in the City of Boston

The City of Boston is abuzz over Mayor Wu's announcement that she is putting the planning of the Downtown Waterfront on ice while the City focuses on East Boston. 

One certainly can't fault the Wu Administration for paying immediate attention to East Boston. There isn't another neighborhood of Boston under greater pressure from economic and natural forces. 

But when did it become okay to do just one thing at a time? Boston is a great city with even greater promise but it also faces several immediate planning challenges. The City deserves a planning department with the resources to move forward on plans for East Boston and the Downtown Waterfront and the Fort Point Channel Neighborhood and Dorchester, and anyplace else needing attention, all at the same time. 

In seeking election, Mayor Wu promised to revisit the Downtown Municipal Harbor Plan. The already completed process that resulted in that Plan took over five years, including 40 public meetings, two public comment periods and a case that has gone to the Commonwealth's Supreme Judicial Court. Hundreds of stakeholders actively participated. Those stakeholders deserve better than to have planning of this critically important 42 acres languish indefinitely.   

Now we're only three months into Mayor Wu's administration and reimagining the City's approach to planning is a very tall order. But there is a very real cost to delay and uncertainty. Our city, including the Downtown Waterfront, deserves a plan that has a beginning, middle and foreseeable end, and resources necessary to implement it.