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So the Seaport Indy Car race wouldn't be in an oval?

Neat idea but I don't agree it has the roads needed for it. F1 cars are smaller, yes? Do they go as fast? I thought that made more sense.

Would abutters let it happen? There is a billion dollars worth of construction underway - how much of a risk is it that a car goes flying off the track?
 
There are some ovals, some street courses. The broad dull streets over there are well suited. Cars don't really go flying about in this sort of racing.

The cars are about the same as F1 cars, but lower revving. Just about as fast.

This wouldn't have the cachet of a Formula 1 race, or the same crowd of big spenders. Probably 30-50k turnout, some international coverage. Might be a good practice run for something bigger.
 
Rumor has it the alternate entrance to Auditorium was open today. Can anyone confirm?

I thought it was only open on Opening Day or Patriot's Day?
 
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Has anyone been having problems accessing citylab.com? For whatever reason, I'm unable to open it on my computer. I've tried a few browsers and nothing has worked
 
It's something I've entertained from time to time, as a way to obtain the nice small streets that I believe are best.

The trouble, besides the obvious political issue, is that Boston streets tend to be awkwardly sized for this conversion. San Francisco has a surprising amount of overly wide streets. Boston's streets, outside of the downtown core, aren't that small...but they are also not that big. Typical street sizes in the streetcar suburbs tend to be about 40 feet building-to-building, or 54 feet building-to-building. McCallister is nearly 70 feet.

Also, the wider streets in Boston tend to be the only available thru-streets, whereas in SF you tend to have multiple alternatives in the grid.

Even a traditional city needs some percentage of wider, arterial streets. (I would prefer something like 15% of streets being arterials, rather than the usual 80-90% that has been forced on us by overzealous road builders / bad city planning).

Comm Ave in Allston is 200 feet wide and seems like a candidate but has the additional complication of containing a separated trolley line and also being a historic 'parkway' (in the original sense -- and one that may actually have a chance of being restored).

Other overly-wide-street options like Columbus Ave in Roxbury or Blue Hill Ave in Dorchester have plenty of vacant land around them that could already be used for housing any time the city gets its act together.

In general, streets are more than they seem at surface level. There are numerous utilities running along underneath that would need to be sorted out before you could build anything. In some cases, those utility lines are over a century old, poorly mapped, and corroding. The big expense of reusing excessive street space for housing would be the effort of relocating these utilities.
 
Matthew said:
In general, streets are more than they seem at surface level. There are numerous utilities running along underneath that would need to be sorted out before you could build anything. In some cases, those utility lines are over a century old, poorly mapped, and corroding. The big expense of reusing excessive street space for housing would be the effort of relocating these utilities.
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This. There's plenty of examples around where streets were nearly removed by development, but an undeveloped slice remains, possibly as an alley, simply because of utilities. Just look at the MassArt dorm: they have that curved edge because of the interceptor sewer running against it.
 
Whoops?

housecomp.jpg


Apparent violation missed in senator’s home expansion
By Stephanie Ebbert, Boston Globe

The city let a state senator fast-track an expansion of her Jamaica Plain home after failing to cite her plans’ apparent violation of the neighborhood’s zoning code, according to a Boston Globe review assisted by two architects.

The apparent height violation was made more visually jarring by a last-minute roof redesign approved weeks after a public hearing on the plans. Rather than sloping back from the street, as originally proposed, the new roof peaks at the front of the house, exaggerating its size from the street view.

The construction at the 3-5 Bremen Terrace home of Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz and her husband, Bryan Hirsch, was allowed to begin “at risk,” after their architect called for quicker action to accommodate her pregnancy.

“The owners are expecting a child in June and it is of paramount importance that the project is substantially complete by that time,” architect John Freeman wrote to city inspectors in April.
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Aesthetics aside, welcome to Boston where one of the biggest political stories of the year is the OUTRAGE of adding a 3rd story to a 2 story building. The mind boggles.
 
datadyne007 said:
That is freaking GHASTLY.
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Add in the flower pots and boxes full of dead flowers and a lawn full of what appears to be weeds... Jeez have some pride in your own property. The satellite dish affixed to the porch doesn't help matters either
 
What I don't get is why they used totally different siding it looks like small one story home was just dropped on top. It's so sloppy looking. Even if it were a different color like it is but the same type of siding it wouldn't be so obnoxious.
 
Here are some photos from a week ago of the Darling harbor area of Sydney:

Queen Victoria building







 
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