BOSTON — A developer whose firm has rejuvenated urban centers around the country was killed along with his wife and daughter when their private plane crashed between two houses in a residential neighborhood Friday.

Two houses flanking the crash site went up in flames, but their occupants escaped injury.

Killed were Michael Spear, 49, president of The Rouse Co., his wife, Judy, 47, and daughter, Jodi, 19, police said. Jodi Spear was a student at Colby College in Waterville.

Rouse projects include the Faneuil Hall shopping area in Boston, the Harborplace on the Baltimore waterfront, the South Street Seaport in New York and Underground Atlanta.

The plane went down on a quiet dead-end street in the city’s Mattapan section. The small white airplane crashed into a driveway between two houses, incinerating two cars parked there and setting the houses on fire.

A resident who lives about a block away recalled the sound of the plane coming in low over the buildings.

“Then all of a sudden I heard a muffled bang. It was an eerie sense over there,” said the man, who would identify himself only as Cliff.

A dense, cool fog and the stench of gasoline filled the air. The single-story homes, one brick, the other wood, looked like charred boxes.

The airplane’s front end was a ruin of blackened white metal and debris. The still-intact rear end sat in the driveway.

Spear flew out of Cape Cod around 6 a.m. in the foggy morning in his two-engine Cheyenne turboprop, bound for Logan International Airport. His daughter was to fly from there to Tokyo, where she planned to study this fall, said a friend of the family.

The Spears lived in Columbia, Md., but had a summer home in Chatham on Cape Cod. They are survived by three daughters.

The aircraft was 20 miles from Logan when the pilot reported engine trouble, said Michael Ciccarelli, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration. About seven miles from the airport he began efforts to land.

But he reported lack of speed, then smoke, then that an engine was out. At 6:30 a.m. the aircraft disappeared from the radar screen. Visibility at the time was one-quarter of a mile, said FAA spokeswoman Gail Lattrell.

People in the neighborhood reported hearing a low-flying aircraft, the sound of an engine cutting out and then a thud as the plane hit the ground.

Neal Silver, 66, lives a few houses down from the crash site.

“I was in bed, not asleep, when I heard this tremendous explosion. Naturally, I jumped up and dressed as fast as I could,” Silver said.

“My neighbors were pounding on the door. I looked out and I could see these whole two buildings engulfed in flames,” he said.

Neighbors poured into the street as thick black smoke billowed to the sky.

Soon the street was crowded with fire trucks and rescue workers and police who cordoned off the crash site as about 300 spectators milled about.

Mayor Raymond Flynn said the city planned to dispatch teams of post-trauma experts to the neighborhood to help people there deal with the disaster.

The Red Cross and other agencies offered emergency assistance to the displaced families. The FAA was investigating.

“It would appear that nobody, thank God, in this neighborhood was hurt,” said Police Commissioner Francis Roache.

James and Mattie Frazier lived in one of the houses. They had already left for work and learned of the crash when a co-worker of Frazier’s heard about it on the radio.

“It’s a total disaster,” said Frazier, a clerk at a computer company.

The Fraziers’ next-door neighbors barely fled with their lives.

Evelyn and Suliman Kemokai and their three children were roused from their slumber by the crash. In moments their house was on fire.

Mrs. Kemokai rounded up the children, two girls 17 and 13, and a son, 6. Her husband, a cab driver, tossed everyone out the kitchen window and escaped that way himself. At first he couldn’t remember it clearly.

“I don’t know how I got out myself,” the dazed-looking 39-year-old Suliman Kemokai said.

Theresa Price lived on the street for many years and said low-flying planes were a common sight there.

“I could look out and you could see the numbers on the planes,” said Ms. Price, 35, a teacher whose mother lives next to the crash site and invited the Fraziers to stay.

Just three years ago and three miles from Friday’s crash, the pilot of a small plane was killed when it crashed into a house.

The June 26, 1987, accident destroyed three houses and injured three people.

“The question has to be raised about the prudence of flying small aircraft at peak times over densely populated neighborhoods to a major international airport,” Flynn said.

Paul Johnston, FAA tower chief at Logan, said the flight path was used during poor weather because it gives access to the safest runways at the airport.

A celebration of the 14th anniversary of the opening of Faneuil Hall Marketplace, scheduled for Monday, has been canceled indefinitely out of respect for Spear, said Robert O’Brien, general manager of the marketplace.