The Boston Globe, August 2024
James Arthur Jemison, a highly regarded city official who shepherded Mayor Michelle Wu’s vision to overhaul planning and development, will leave his role as Boston’s first chief of planning next month. He will depart the city amid a time of enormous transformation for the erstwhile Boston Planning and Development Agency — which Jemison also leads — the newly created city Planning Department, and the city’s real estate industry.
Just a month ago, the BPDA formally transitioned from a quasi-public agency that operated outside of the city’s budget into an internal, city-run planning department. But that laborious process faced a setback this week, with the state Legislature failing to pass a home-rule petition that would allow the city to rewrite the decades-old legal structures that created the agency. Jemison, who came to city hall from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and before that worked for the city of Detroit, will move back to Michigan to be with his family, he said in an email to staff Thursday.
