The Passion of Mission Hill

Mission Hill and the Miracle of Boston was featured at the MIT Urban Planning Film Series on November 14, 2014. John Grady led a discussion after the film.

Here is how it was introduced by Karilyn Crockett, Martin Luther King Post-doctoral fellow at MIT:
For anyone who likes Boston or who definitely does not, this film is for you. Boston’s recent mayoral election offers a new opportunity to examine some of the city’s most enduring problems related to race, place and the postwar economic development of its neighborhoods and downtown. Esteemed documentary filmmakers, Richard Broadman and John Grady conceived “Mission Hill and the Miracle of Boston” (1978) as both snapshot and critique of big business-driven urban renewal. But don’t worry this 60-min film is not pumped up policy drivel. First person accounts of residents coupled with raw newsreel reveal the physical and psychological impacts of rapid urban change from the frontline. View this fascinating document of Boston’s recent past and learn the backstory of many of the political, economic and racial tensions that continue to inform the city’s construction agenda today. It includes in depth consideration of racially segregated public housing developments in the Mission Hill/Heath Street neighborhood as well as the downtown creation of Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market as contested tourist destination, and offers a compelling look at multiple approaches to 20th century U.S. city building.

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