The waterfront along the lower Mystic River could be one of Greater Boston’s crown jewels—a shining example of a resilient working waterfront that is also widely accessible to the public and naturally beautiful. This vision of the lower Mystic waterfront, based on two years of deep community engagement across multiple municipalities, is detailed in a new report published by the Resilient Mystic Collaborative (RMC), a collective of 20 cities and towns in the Mystic River watershed working together to address the region’s climate challenges, in partnership with the Consensus Building Institute and Stoss Landscape Urbanism.
The project focused on a section of the Mystic River at the heart of Boston’s working waterfront, with critical infrastructure that supports Greater Boston and the broader New England region. The lower Mystic, which refers to the tidal portion of the watershed below the Amelia Earhart Dam, spans five municipalities—Boston, Chelsea, Everett, Somerville, and Revere. Future projections show that coastal flood risks will extend above the dam into the cities of Medford and Malden, along with others. Together, these communities account for 70% of the total watershed population. They have faced unique historic challenges and are now preparing for new ones—growing demands for waterfront access, local jobs, housing affordability, and climate protection.
The City of Chelsea served as the fiscal host for the funding for this project, which was awarded through the Massachusetts Vulnerability Preparedness grant program. The project team worked with a resident-led steering committee and spoke with community members across the region to develop a report documenting a shared regional vision for this part of the waterfront. These recommendations are being taken up by the Resilient Mystic Collaborative and will inform their resilience work going forward.
The Tobin Bridge. Credit: Isaiah Johnson
A Vision for a Thriving, Inclusive, and Climate-Resilient Waterfront
The Mystic River Waterfront Vision report draws from climate data, municipal plans, community voices, businesses, and other stakeholders to knit together ideas and aspirations toward a collective blueprint for the waterfront’s future. Highlights from the report cover the following themes:
Resilient and Climate-Ready Communities
Elevate shorelines, update building codes, address flooding, and use nature-based solutions
Connected and Continuous Water Access
Improve path networks, neighborhood access, recreation, and other multi-modal transportation
Inclusive and Active Open Spaces
New accessible parks, lighting, signage, bathrooms, and waterfront programming
A Thriving Working Waterfront
Economic development, regional coalition-building, and local workforce development
Excerpts from interviews conducted as part of the project. Click to enlarge.
To implement the recommendations across the four themes, new governance and coordination structures are needed. Currently, there are no institutional mechanisms to support collective planning for the lower Mystic. The region requires a shared framework to vision, plan, and align efforts across communities, while respecting each municipality’s autonomy.
The report recommends creating a more formal institutional arrangement that can act on these recommendations in stages over time. In order to do this, we must:
Form working groups to advance near-term actions.
Incorporate the four themes of this vision into our own planning efforts at the municipal, regional, and state levels.
Complete a working waterfront economic development vision.
Formalize an efficient, coordinated, resourced regional entity that can advance Boston area waterfront planning, projects, and consistency across jurisdictions.
The full report can be found on the Resilient Mystic Collaborative Website. As part of the project, the Consensus Building Institute produced a podcast episode that highlights the voices of local residents and workers, which can be accessed on Spotify and on Apple Music.
