Boston Council committee hears case for naming Chinatown plaza after Tunney Lee

BOSTON — April 6, 2026 — Boston City Council committee hears unanimous community support for naming Chinatown plaza after urban planner Tunney Lee. Councillor Edward M. Flynn's Docket 0178, referred to the Committee on Planning, Development, and Transportation in January, proposes dedicating the new pedestrian plaza being constructed at Phillips Square on Harrison Avenue as Tunney Lee Plaza. Amy Cording, the Boston Transportation Department's Director of Engineering, testified that the dedication would not require renaming the existing Phillips Square but would instead go through the Streets Cabinet's administrative process, recorded at the Registry of Deeds and timed to a formal ribbon cutting; she did not have the full design and construction budget available. Tunney Lee, who died in 2020 after decades as chief of planning and design at the Boston Redevelopment Authority and as a professor in MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning, grew up at 5 Oxford Place, steps from the proposed plaza. Witness after witness tied the naming to Chinatown's status as Boston's neighborhood with the lowest urban tree canopy — just 7 percent — and the least open space per capita, with residents of nearby buildings without air conditioning regularly sleeping outdoors at the site through summer heat waves. Committee Chair Sharon Durkan, flanked by Councillors Flynn, Erin J. Murphy, and Miniard Culpepper, held the record open for written testimony to be forwarded to the Public Improvement Commission.