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I still love the UMass Dartmouth campus and its buildings by Paul Rudolph, where I attended 1972-1976 when it was only a few years old. Fantastic buildings and layout of the campus by Mr. Rudolph.

I agree, but it took some jarring electroshock therapy to bring 1950s post-war Boston back to life. The elevated Central artery in the 1950s and the massive urban renewal projects in the 60s were intended to jolt Boston back from the dead, but those extreme measures certainly took their toll.

That 2nd one looks like a city out on the midwestern plains. Never saw a shot of Boston in that context before. Fantastic!

It references 1970s Arlington, which was made up largely of what were sometimes called "lace curtain Irish". My own grandparents immigrated from Ireland, and that side of my family in that generation was largely of that type. They didn't live in Arlington, but they were of a type, as...

Well, I threw in that well known info about the cancelled expressways just for context for others. Side tidbit: Gov. Sargent used to go fishing with my uncle from Gloucester.

Yes, there are choke points at some key major intersections that could use capacity and traffic flow improvements, up to and including building new vehicular overpasses or underpasses at those sites. Mystic Valley Pkwy and the Fellsway (Wellington Circle) is one. So is the rotary on Rte 2 in...

Yes, the Boston metro area is a bit unique, mainly because of its narrow roads, such as Fresh Pond Parkway. But the chance of new additional roads passing NIMBY and political muster is absolutely zero. It was tried in the 1960s with the Inner Belt, NE Expwy and SW Expwy, and they were all...

I'm guessing $20 billion to build this, in today's inflated costs. Then the new tunnel would be clogged up with traffic anyway. Better to spend that money on GLX to Porter, the Red-Blue Connector, and BLX to Lynn. Also build a direct bus lane connector from Alewife station to the Concord...

See the following post by arenacale: http://archboston.com/community/threads/bulfinch-crossing-congress-street-garage-west-end.2850/post-486464

This would have been a good opportunity to narrow up the streets a bit, as the streets built in the 1960s urban renewal GC project are highways. But it looks like they're replicating the multiple lanes and all. Oh well, at least that leaves room for bus lanes.

Vancouver BC comes the closest to a no-freeway major city in North America, with just one east-west freeway about 5 miles north and east from the city center. I've been there, and saw the careful zoning around that one freeway which minimizes the suburban sprawl usually found in...

Next time my wife and I are in that part of the country, we'll have to check it out. New Orleans is my favorite southern city so far.

Agree. Also, the dye was cast for urban expressways when Robert Moses in the 1930s and 40s planned out a network of limited-access multi-lane "parkways" for NYC as well as several all-purpose expressways, launched by the "Futurama" exhibit at the 1939 World's Fair in NYC, an exhibit sponsored...

Totally agree. As much as I think some of them look kinda cool, I personally wish the expressways and turnpikes of the 1950s through the present had never been built at all, and instead we had kept intact and further developed the passenger and freight rail network we had in the 1930s. Our...

The Mass Pike through Boston isn't extremely impactive visually, in my opinion. Much of it is becoming increasingly decked over, and the highway generally was threaded fairly carefully through the urban fabric in the 1960s. helped by the pre-existence in the corridor of 4-track major railroad...

It is a very subjective and individual thing. I actually like highways, depending of course on the context.

I agree. That thought crossed my mind when I wrote that comment. But I still like the urban gritty look of that photo with the elevated ramps in the foreground.

I like the elevated ramps in the 1st photo. It makes for an active urban look.

The building to me looks like square black holes encased in white-ish plastic.

I've been involved with wall and bridge projects that used integral coloring of concrete (where the coloring is an ingredient in the concrete mix), and they turned out well.