Urban Renewal? BRA Debate Goes Retro

If Brian Golden and Corey Zehngebot were selling the exact same policy under any name but “urban renewal,” they’d make more headway among Boston’s wary grass-roots activists, who remember what that phrase used to mean.

Golden is director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, the muscular agency that’s been reshaping the city’s physical form for more than a half-century. Zehngebot is an architect and urban designer; she’s also leading the BRA’s push for a 10-year extension of its urban renewal programs, most of which expire next April. These are the same mechanisms by which the agency bulldozed…