The vision thing

Eleven years into the administration of Mayor Tom Menino, I have no idea what his vision of Boston is. By that I mean I have no idea what he wants the city to look like. How high should it be and how dense? I'm not alone. I asked a longtime resident of the city about the Menino vision and he burst out laughing.

Time to talk to the man in charge of the vision thing -- Boston Redevelopment Authority director Mark Maloney, who has czarist powers to shape our urban future. Or maybe he just implements Menino's czarist dictums. Either way, it is his agency that controls permitting, planning, and economic development in this city.

I've always maintained that people flock to Boston for its lovely scale, not the glass and steel of a Devonshire Place, which, after all, you can find in Tulsa. But, urbanistas chant, cities must grow as sharks must swim or die. Fine. So where is the tipping point between growth and aesthetic disaster?

Not here, not now, not even close, says Maloney. ''The market helps me determine when enough is enough," he adds.

What concerns him more than the old Boston is the new Boston. And that means the third of the city's population between 20 and 34 who leave in droves for better job opportunities. ''If Columbus Center [the huge project to be built over the Massachusetts Turnpike near Copley Place] has an internationally designed spa," he says, ''they're not going to say no because it's not red brick."

OK, but what's at stake here is the balance that keeps both Bostons healthy. Maloney, it turns out, has other worries about old Boston: The Back Bay and Beacon Hill are losing their density as more gazillionaires convert townhouses from apartments to single-family homes.

Maloney says the vision thing is hard to explain because it varies so sharply by neighborhood. Take Roxbury's Dudley Square, the area of the city that most interests him. He's putting a lot of affordable housing in the old Dartmouth Hotel above the first-floor store, Nubian Notions.

North Station, in contrast, is already zoned for 400 feet -- about 38 stories. Maloney wouldn't be surprised to see a 60-story tower at South Station. Both projects would be sited near major public transportation terminals. Ditto, he adds, for the Columbus Center project, with a 35-story tower.

Maloney favors the conversion of older downtown office towers into residential lofts. He has opened talks with Gillette and the other large landowners of about 100 acres in South Boston to discuss a zoning change there for more development in exchange for a major traffic improvement -- a road connecting the Gillette plant to the Haul Road used by trucks.

He wants to keep the Northern Avenue Bridge as a pedestrian passage linking the downtown with the South Boston waterfront. Speaking of which: Is anyone ever going to buy the Fan Pier, lynchpin to the development? When will it no longer feel like the dark side of the moon there? ''The current owner of the Fan Pier has received an education in its value," he says. ''If he sells it, it won't be for $125 million. There's a gap of $20-25 million."

''We could be flexible on timing and the dimensions of the public accommodation space," he adds, regarding a new owner. ''But there's nothing wrong with the plan." That said, Maloney has commissioned a study of the public accommodation space on the waterfront: ''We're not entirely certain that it is drawing the public as intended."

What concerns Maloney most is the institutional expansion of universities and hospitals, the engines of our economy. Which brings us to the giant Harvard play in Allston. Harvard rolled the city early in the game. No longer, says Maloney:

''They call us every time they buy a building. We have meetings with them every two or three weeks and I go to them. Harvard Yard is lovely and quaint, but it's not what we're looking for for the Allston community. We want an open campus." And if Harvard pulls a fast one? ''We'll be in their face."

Blood will flow over the number of jobs there allotted to the local work force. ''We want a certain percentage," he says. But surely you can't tell Harvard whom to hire for Allston. ''Why can't we?" he responds. ''There aren't scientists who live in Boston?" And what does Harvard say about this? ''They bristle," he concedes. ''They think it's their business, not ours. We told them we're not going to change."

The development plays around town mean more people and cars in a city whose streets were once cowpaths. ''The volume won't be a problem if the traffic is moving, and as we approve these buildings we're going to change the traffic patterns," Maloney maintains.

Horsefeathers. Growth in Boston will succeed only with a better public transportation system to accommodate it, and we could all be under the sod before the Urban Ring, a transit project to bring commuters into Boston, becomes a reality.

But Maloney is doing his best to separate commuters from their cars. The rule for new commercial space in the financial district is four-tenths of a parking space per 1,000 feet. This indecipherable formula basically means that people who don't rate a space will either pay a confiscatory amount of money to garage their cars or succumb to public transportation.

Either way, Boston will keep filling up by going up. I just hope we don't end up looking like Tulsa.

Sam Allis's e-mail address is: allis@globe.com