Search results

It's not really that lousy of an area. I have to speak up for it since I grew up around there. Mid-rise residential along Concord Ave across from Fresh Pond could potentially be a prime location. A pedestrian bridge across the Fitchburg Div west of Alewife Brook Pkwy, tying into...

The only exception seems to be all the great development around Kendall Square and Cambridge Crossing. The rest of Cambridge has historically been paralyzed by obsessive hand-wringing.

I agree. That whole area has always been a ticky-tack mishmash of light industrial and commercial, drifting along through the decades.

I (was) a highway designer, and also have followed expressway planning and design since I was a kid. In the 1950s, city planning and highway design were completely car-centric, ignoring the micro-transit connectivity provided by small streets and pathways in favor of pushing through expressways...

I agree, and I do like the old bridge. If the steel truss were sandblasted and repainted, have some really cool complimentary accessories placed on it, and have some interesting lighting at night, it would look great. But then again, I like the old industrial look, including truss bridges. I...

Yes, on this 2007 Google streetview you can see the roadway (now gone) that ran underneath the SB overpass. It took NB Medford Street traffic to Washington Street, then to the NB McGrath Hwy.

Can't because of the FAA height restrictions from Logan's flight paths.

As it should be in the center of a real city.

The NB didn't need to be elevated because up until relatively recently there was no traffic light on the NB direction of McGrath Hwy. This was the case for several decades after the elevated SB highway was built in the 1950s. Traffic heading NB from Medford St went into a roadway that ran...

Regarding the large size of the proposed bus area at West Station, could it possibly be shared in the future with light rail trains from an LRV converted Grand Junction RR? If for whatever reason an LRV line can't be wedged into the proposed surface trackage and rail station area, this might work.

I like the 4 station tracks as they would allow future conversion of the GJ to light rail, with the track and platform space all set up for that.

My childhood neighborhood. How much will that house go for? $2 million, $3 million? When I was a teenager, houses were around $10,000 in North Cambridge.

Wow, they really have to shift the Pike to the north to make room for those two layover tracks. What a waste. Also, as has often been said on here, that overall street layout of wide streets and super blocks looks like an expressway system.

A 1908 vintage photo from the Library of Congress of the Longfellow Bridge, built in 1906. I love the parkland that used to be where the Storrow Drive interchange and parking have been since the 1950s. In this photo, the Red Line center reservation on the bridge and the ramp for its future...

Yep. More corporate ownership, more chain stores. more high-end, more sterile, more oligarchs. That's the way of the whole country pretty much.

Yeah, I hate those. They don't complement the existing hotel.

The ironic thing about the Bowker overpass is it probably never would have been built if not for the Mass Pike being built. At the time (early 60s), the Mass Pike construction wiped out the Charlesgate bridge over the railroad tracks, so a replacement was needed, and the MDC figured they might...

To paraphrase an old Who song: Meet the new overpass, same as the old overpass.

Leaving in a network of open and undeveloped space is important for human mental and physical health as well as for ecological sustainability. Even downtown NYC and Boston have large parks in their center, and we have this wonderful network of parks and reservations set up by Olmsted and others...

For the location and context that building is in, it is perfect. I actually like it quite a bit. It's kind of a combination of two looks: a bit of the old industrial look (the flat façade and multi-paned windows), and also a bit of the 1960s urban renewal/office park look. It's far superior to...