In this time of concern about global climate change and environmental quality, few strategies approach the virtue of simply staying put, and focusing upon improvements to our home environment.

By David Parish

Few things matter more than where we live. Where we live can determine whom we meet, what we hope for, and what we fear. It can determine how we work, whether we prosper, our sense of community, and our relationship to the natural world. 

Americans are a peripatetic lot; we move often, looking for who knows what. We have been a young nation, but we are getting older now. And while youth is about exploring opportunities, maturity is about refining choices — and ultimately making commitments.
 
For the last several years, the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston, in cooperation with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, the New England regional office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the University of Massachusetts Lowell, has sponsored the New England Smart Growth Forum, an annual meeting of professionals focused upon smart-growth issues in the six New England states.
  
The 2006 meeting borrowed a theme from Comeback Cities, a book by Paul Grogan (see page 4), president and CEO of the Boston Foundation. Invited guests met for two days in Worcester, Massachusetts, to discuss successful revitalization strategies and view the impressive progress being made in the City of Worcester. 

The forum included reports from New England states on innovations in urban revitalization as well as discussion of strategies to attract and retain business, growth trends in the region, and redevelopment of urban brownfields.

While the variety and sophistication of revitalization strategies presented were impressive, they all shared one common element: an individual or group of individuals who simply decided to make a commitment to a place and then do everything within their power to see that community and its citizens prosper. In this time of concern about global climate change and environmental quality, few strategies approach the virtue of simply staying put, and focusing upon improvements to our home environment. 

The Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston is an institution with a long commitment to New England and a willing partner in the growth and improvement of the region. T

David Parish is member services representative and former director of the Housing and Community Investment Department at the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston.