After three decades during which Americans became the fattest, most indebted, most incarcerated and most unequal among their peers in other wealthy industrialized nations, the time has come to reinvigorate our economy and our democracy for the long haul.

In that critical mission, Boston has an important role to play. Locus of a revolution in every century since its founding vision as a “city on a hill, with the eyes of the world upon it,” Boston spawned the American Revolution, America’s Industrial Revolution and the Information Age. A “small large city” with almost unparalleled innovative capacity, Boston has shown that it can light the way forward in challenging times when city and state government, business, civic and community leadership combine forces. 

Greater Boston’s successful and diversified knowledge economy was its salvation following the loss of its manufacturing base, but today, we can see that many of the region’s residents have paid a price in growing income inequality. The two-tiered knowledge economy rewards those with stellar educations and punishes those without. On the one hand are those privileged from birth to whom benefits accrue such as the best educational opportunities and, by extension, the best jobs; on the other are those who, from birth, face high hurdles and for whom access to excellence in public systems— from education and health care to recreation and the arts—can be the deciding factor in a child’s fate. 

•  An Exemplary Pre-K–16 Pipeline of Educational Opportunity: In our universities and communities, Greater Bostonians have all of the ingredients necessary to build the finest and most seamless Pre-K – 16 system in the world. Preparing all children for the problem solving, innovation and cooperation that will be demanded of them in this challenging new century must be our highest calling. Mayor Menino and Governor Patrick have embraced this goal. Greater Bostonians, in concert, could help to achieve it.
• Leadership in the Shift to a Green Economy: As the world’s population explodes, renewable energy sources must be taken to scale to protect natural resources while allowing living standards to rise. Moreover, green jobs transcend the knowledge-economy split in offering niches at a variety of levels of education and technical prowess—from public education and retrofitting homes and businesses, to manufacturing efficient products and researching next-generation breakthroughs.
• Investment in Small Businesses and Start Ups: Small businesses are the growth engines of new jobs and the eco-system for innovation, yet many promising entrepreneurs lack access to capital and technical assistance. This must change.
• A Focus on Health, not Health Care: Massachusetts spends more per capita than anywhere else in the world yet faces rising rates of obesity and hypertension—risk factors for chronic preventable disease. Meanwhile, rising health care costs are crowding out the real determinants of health: healthy environments and healthy behaviors. It’s time to put the horse before the cart.
• Regional Collaboration: Decreasing the region’s high housing, health care and energy costs while increasing its sustainability, food security and resilience to future price and supply shocks requires unprecedented cooperation and collaboration. The time has come to put aside historic resistance to becoming a whole greater than the sum of our parts.

All of these goals—and goals for the leadership and civic mechanisms required to make them happen—are laid out in the pull-out Civic Agenda in this report. The Civic Agenda reflects the priorities and hard work of thousands of Greater Boston residents, leaders and experts over the past decade, and points the way forward. Many solutions require not more funds but more collaboration, harder thinking, tougher choices, greater effort. 

To realize these goals, we must shift our sights from what might accrue to us individually and turn them higher while grounding our effort in the values underlying the commitment of Edward Kennedy, whose loss and legacy hover across these pages. Senator Kennedy understood that from those to whom much is given, much is expected, and he gave his all to make the world a better and fairer place. 

Senator Kennedy’s legacy echoes John Winthrop’s founding vision for Massachusetts as expressed in his speech to his fellow colonists as they sailed toward a new beginning: “We must,” he said, “be knit together in this work as one man [and] be willing to abridge ourselves of superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities.We must delight in each other, make others’ condition our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor together…as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of spirit in the bond of peace.…  For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”