Mayor Martin Walsh hosted a ‘Mondays with the Mayor’ town hall this week at the Richard J. Murphy School in Neponset where he and residents discussed, among other things, the city-wide development boom, investments in parks and libraries, and neighborhood violence.

More than 100 people sat and stood around the school auditorium as Walsh recapped a number of initiatives and investments in Dorchester. Among them: a $12 million Adams Street Library renovation that is in the planning phase and $5 million that is budgeted for an overhaul of Garvey Park.

In what is now a familiar note in his addresses, Walsh spoke about the pressures placed on Boston during the city’s third largest period of growth. Boston’s official population is about 656,000 residents, although Walsh said he expected the 2015 numbers to come in at around 670,000.

Walsh ticked off new housing developments that are in line with his Boston 2030 plan, which would create 53,000 new units by that yead. About 36,500 units are already under way, he said, “way ahead of our proposal.”

Before opening the floor for questions, Walsh touched on issues of community policing and gun violence.

Every crime metric dropped last year with the exception of shootings, he said, which has a slight spike from the year before. Arrests are down 50 percent, and “that number is the best number I can give you to talk about, because that number explains not that police aren’t doing their jobs,” but that through community policing models “instead of trying to arrest our way out of a problem, we’re trying to work our way out of a problem.”

One mother who spoke from the floor asked the mayor what she could do to support both her sons and the police that serve the neighborhoods. He referred her to members of the administration, along with Boston Police Department Superintendent-in-Chief William Gross and new C-11 Captain Tim Connolly, who were present at the meeting.

Residents were called from sign-in cards to ask their questions personally and Walsh made his way through a stack of handwritten question cards filled out as attendees signed in to the event.

For one hour, Walsh and members of his administration fielded questions on topics including forced evictions, noise complaints, community college, and the swath of new development moving through the neighborhood.

Attendees were encouraged to talk directly to members of the administration after the question and answer session. Along with much of the local elected delegation, departments ranging from inspectional services, public works, public schools, and neighborhood development were represented.