Community action/Boston

The aim of this page is to recognise, celebrate and encourage the self-empowerment of community agency networks (CANs) and community groups' activism for climate, environment and many other sustainability topics across Boston.

Global or International events

2021-2030, UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, International community action events

Cosmolocal discovery club

Each week 3 different short videos from across the world.

What Is Hylo? A Quick Overview

Authors: Hylo, 1.01 mins.

Date: 2026-05-20

A resilient island, Guiuan, Philippines - trailer

Authors: Partners for Resilience, 3.50 mins.

Date: 2020-03-30

First Timers Welcome Explained

Authors: parkrun, 2.14 mins.

Date: 2022-01-27

Community networks, Community action/Philippines, Arts, sport and culture / ...This week's featured UK videos / ... read more about Cosmolocalism

Inside Watertown’s Flourishing Arsenal Park Garden

Authors: Watertown Cable News, 4.20 mins.

Date: 2025-10-25

Stewarding Change 2024

Authors: Boston Food Forest Coalition, 4.16 mins.

Date: 2024-12-13

Watertown Plants Miyawaki Forest

Authors: Watertown Cable News, 3.11 mins.

Date: 2024-11-01

Boston Ujima Project Ecosystem

Authors: Boston Ujima Project, 3.14 mins.

Date: 2017-10-04

Welcome to Hubway

Authors: Hubway ABS, 1.30 mins.

Date: 2012-12-11

• Boston Food Forest Coalition, Creating food forest parks stewarded by local communities. Boston Food Forest Coalition on youtube.com, added 14:40, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

League of Urban Canners

Planting an urban fruit tree is more than a lifetime commitment — it is an intergenerational civic responsibility. Each summer, in Greater Boston, a huge amount of backyard fruit falls to the ground and sidewalk, where it rots and creates a mess. Property owners and municipalities are often pressured to remove these "nuisances," while many urban residents are struggling to access local and organic food sources. The League of Urban Canners has developed a network of individuals to map, harvest, preserve, and share this otherwise wasted fruit. They make agreements with property owners to share the work of fruit harvesting and preserving, as well as tree and arbor pruning. The preserved fruits are shared between property owners (10 percent), preservers (70 percent), and harvesters (20 percent). Each season the completely volunteer-run enterprise harvests and preserves about 5,000 pounds of fruit from a database of more than 300 trees and arbors. Myriad acts of cooperation sustain this urban commons, in which harvesters, property owners, preservers, and eaters learn to share responsibility, resources, and care for each other and their urban environment. —Oona Morrow, Shareable

Other initiatives

Higher Ground Farm, Boston's first rooftop farm, facebook page

• Resonant Energy, Dorchester, Boston

Senior Village Movement, Boston

The first senior village began in Boston's Beacon Hill neighborhood in 2001 when about a dozen elders wanted to avoid going to a nursing home. They founded a nonprofit to co-purchase the services retirement communities provide, but get them where they already live. They became the first "virtual retirement community" offering services such as transportation, food delivery, home repairs, dog walking, and social activities. After four years of successful operation, The New York Times published a feature story about Beacon Hill Village. The idea began to spread.

To support those who were interested in following their example, Beacon Hill Village published a how to manual and began helping other elders set up villages. Eventually, the Village to Village Network was formed to launch these villages. Today there are over 200 villages around the world with more than 150 forming.

Rita Kostiuk, national coordinator of the Village to Village Network, says:

"People are excited and want to move to where villages are, I think villages benefit the whole person; mind, body and soul. As we educate the federal government on how well it's working, we'll start seeing even more."...@Shareable

• Greenovate Boston, community-driven movement to get Bostonians involved in reducing the city's greenhouse gas emissions 25% by 2020 and 80% by 2050

With nearly a third of Bostonians using public transit for their commute to work, Boston has the fifth-highest rate of public transit usage in the country. Nicknamed "The Walking City", Boston hosts more pedestrian commuters than do other comparably populated cities. Owing to factors such as the compactness of the city and large student population, 13% of the population commutes by foot, making it the highest percentage of pedestrian commuters in the country out of the major American cities. As of 2013, Walk Score ranks Boston as the third most walkable US city. ^W

Hubway bike sharing system for Metro-Boston

From Wikipedia:Boston

Boston () is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. It serves as a cultural and financial center of New England, a region of the Northeastern United States. Boston has an area of 48.4 sq mi (125 km²) and a population of 675,647 as of the 2020 census, making it the third-most populous city in the Northeastern United States after New York City and Philadelphia. The larger Greater Boston metropolitan statistical area had a population of 4.9 million in 2023, making it the largest metropolitan area in New England and the eleventh-largest in the United States.

Boston was founded on Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 by English Puritan settlers, who named the city after the market town of Boston, Lincolnshire in England. During the American Revolution and Revolutionary War, Boston was home to several seminal events, including the Boston Massacre (1770), the Boston Tea Party (1773), Paul Revere's midnight ride (1775), the Battle of Bunker Hill (1775), and the Siege of Boston (1775–1776).

Following American independence from Great Britain, Boston played an important national role as a port, manufacturing hub, and education and culture center, and the city expanded significantly beyond the original peninsula by filling in land and annexing neighboring towns. Boston's many firsts include the nation's first public park (Boston Common, 1634), the first public school (Boston Latin School, 1635), and the first subway system (Tremont Street subway, 1897).

Boston later emerged as a global leader in higher education and research and is the largest biotechnology hub in the world as of 2023. The city is a national leader in scientific research, law, medicine, engineering, and business. With nearly 5,000 startup companies, the city is considered a global pioneer in innovation, entrepreneurship, and artificial intelligence. Boston's economy is led by finance, professional and business services, information technology, and government. The city's businesses and institutions rank among the top in the nation for environmental sustainability and new investment.