RIP BRA; Long Live BPDA

BOSTON, MA — The Boston Redevelopment Authority is rebranding, a bid to reorient its work and restore public trust in a city organization that's taken plenty of well-deserved heat over the years.

A website from the city "outlines the new organizational identity and brand strategy of the Boston Planning & Development Agency (BPDA), formerly known as the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA). It redefines what we do, why we do it and how we go about our work."

If the corporate-speak of "brand strategy" is enough to get your skin crawling, we're with you. However, according to the city, the goal is not just to slap a new logo and acronym onto the group, but to better communicate its mission and reposition the BRA-turned-BPDA in the face of nearly unprecedented city development and construction demands.

As Bill Forry, of The Dorchester Reporter, writes:

"By putting the emphasis on the P – for planning – the Walsh administration hopes to eventually earn better buy-in from an often skeptical base that over time came to view the decades-old Boston Redevelopment Authority as simply a rubber-stamp permitter for high-end developers that had a tin-ear for grassroots concerns about density, affordability, and street-level impacts."

The other emphasis, as Forry writes, is more public outreach and better communication.

Read more from The Dorchester Reporter here.