Extend the Rose Kennedy Greenway

[JeffDowntown]

This was also pushed to my YouTube algo and thought it was fun, if a bit simplistic. Bridging the deck between Back Bay station and Harrison would be one of the biggest ROIs in the whole region, I think. It rights some of the wrongs for Chinatown residents and linearizing travel between South Station-adjacent parts of the Theater District and Chinatown to Back Bay station over the Pike would shrink the city. Every time I walk over the Pike it's a pain, with awful sightlines, noise and pollution, and poorly timed pedestrian lights.

There are some basic little studies on doing this but I think the Chinatown and Bay Village neighborhood groups could make some headway with a friendly administration in place right now. It's been well over a year since I've seen updates on this.

Reconnecting Chinatown

The objective is to design to transform this area that sees excessive concrete into an integrated part of the urban fabric of Boston, as well as an area that provides much-needed open, green, and community spaces, connections, and other quality of life improvements to Chinatown and surrounding...

www.boston.gov

10 years ago when I was on the Chinatown Masterplan Committee. we were advocating for relocating the roads on either sides of the Turnpike Pit (Herald and Marginal) to become a boulevard over the Pike, with park land. This frees up terra firma footprints along the pike that could anchor some buildings as well, particularly where there is poor land use along the Pike (Mass Pike Towers parking lot; Castle Square low-rise parking garage....). It is easier to put a road over the Pike than build high rises on deck only.

 

[stick n move]

Yea that was a popular option in this thread, unfortunately a lot of the parcels have since been built on. It would have been nice if they had created a masterplan for here 10-15 years ago to follow so important parcels were saved, but at this point it is what it is. Were going to have to find a way to work with what we have now.

 

[Charlie_mta]

I want some park, at least enough for a multi-use path to thread it's way through to the South West Corridor, but also lots of mid-rise housing.

A few high-rise residential might still be intermittently placed along the north and/or south edges of the corridor on solid ground if the frontage roads were moved over toward the center of the corridor, over the Mass Pike and/or railroad. The moving of the frontage roads was an idea from davem posted on aB several years ago.

 

[Charlie_mta]

A few high-rise residential might still be intermittently placed along the north and/or south edges of the corridor on solid ground if the frontage roads were moved over toward the center of the corridor, over the Mass Pike and/or railroad. The moving of the frontage roads was an idea from davem posted on aB several years ago.

Here's a quick and dirty layout of what I have in mind. The orange is high rise residential, the yellow mid-rise, the green is new parks, and the grey/red are relocated roadways:

 

[stick n move]

Thank god we can upload pics to the site now so stuff doesnt disappear over time. I made sure to upload every screenshot from the recent post through the site so it cant break later on. The amount of great ideas that have disappeared sucks. Somebody shared this which was originally from this thread, a few months ago, so might as well upload it back in here with the site uploader.

This was an idea for moving marginal rd and herald st to the center so the solid land could be used on the sides. Since this was made a bunch of spots have been filled in like ink block, the new school, the chinatown affordable housing 5 over 1, and a couple office towers.

 

[Charlie_mta]

Thank god we can upload pics to the site now so stuff doesnt disappear over time. I made sure to upload every screenshot from the recent post through the site so it cant break later on. The amount of great ideas that have disappeared sucks. Somebody shared this which was originally from this thread, a few months ago, so might as well upload it back in here with the site uploader.

This was an idea for moving marginal rd and herald st to the center so the solid land could be used on the sides. Since this was made a bunch of spots have been filled in like ink block, the new school, the chinatown affordable housing 5 over 1, and a couple office towers.
View attachment 74315

Davem did that one, and it was genius at the time. Like you said, some of the key parcels that would have maximized the building of high rise residential on the solid ground freed up my moving the roadways inward (as davem showed), have been developed since davem's plan. But as I showed in my post above, there are still a couple of opportunities for high rises if the roadways are moved over the Pike and railroad.