“By the year 2030, Boston will reach more than 700,000 residents, a number the City has not seen since the 1950s. Housing Boston 2030 is the City's strategy to responsibly plan for [this] growth..… [and] help create 53,000 new units of housing at a variety of income levels across the City” (Housing a Changing City; Boston 2030).

Within this framework, the 2017 Urban Symposium at Boston University will focus on answering the following question: Is there any room for “sustainable” housing development around rapid transit stations in Boston?  

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Concerns gravitated toward equity as the major component of sustainability.  The class worked to develop a framework to consider node based housing and selection of areas.  With gentrification and displacement of longtime residents being a major concern of the class, the class took a look at social variables along with physical capacity variables to select the most suitable rapid transit stations to place equitable development.