TomOfBoston
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All those parking garages despite having an on site T station!
I agree. At the same time, Community College station is already there. North Point (or whatever you want to call "that") could of done the same as the developers at Assembly or NB and kicked in. I understand that they want the GLX and are "sort of" committed to helping that out, but gosh.
Anyway, I don't want to derail the thread.
This seems to have a really simple answer. The developer at Assembly was better prepared & ready to go, while the developer at Northpoint just wasn't & folded. If you have the will & the means to accomplish it, you'll get it done. The Northpoint vision was always weak (arbitrary buildings/towers with no real draw) and never as ambitious as Assembly's. If you don't have a clear vision, people aren't going to invest in it.
Now if they could only take the "you have to have a child" thing off the restrictions at Legoland... Gosh darn-it I am a child at heart and I like to build things...let me in.
All those parking garages despite having an on site T station!
The T will never be a viable primary transit option for anyone anywhere [...]
You're right, I should have said reliable primary transit option. As I said, I am also one of many thousands who rely on the T every day.
But look, either residents ought to have cars at places like Assembly or they ought not (to be clear, I am talking about residents of Assembly, not necessarily visitors to it). DigitalSciGuy's point seems to me to be that there's way too much parking there for residents at a location with (theoretically) convenient public transit access to downtown and a growing number of local employment nodes. Is Assembly a complete, ready made neighborhood that completely supports the carless resident? No, though a grocery store would go a long way to helping make it one.
My own sense is that if places like Assembly are to be built and public infrastructure created or extended to support it (trains, buses, roads, sidewalks, etc.) then it is a matter of public policy as to how to encourage or direct people use those public accommodations. Allowing residents to have cars in order to get wherever they want to go is as much a public policy decision as is prohibiting residents from having cars (or simply not building all that parking). Prioritizing the growth of a neighborhood like Assembly over other concerns is equally a public policy decision. They are all legitimate options insofar as they are all possible, but they are all choices that we as a polity or our representatives in government must make. In my opinion, in the case of Assembly, we made the wrong public policy choice. We may disagree on that, but if we do it is because of a fundamental policy disagreement, not because one of us hasn't thought things through. (As a side note, I notice that many disagreements here at Archboston arise out of fundamental policy disagreements and I believe the quality of debate here would be improved if we all recognized those disagreements as such.)
My point about the T relates in that the shortcomings of our public transit system make it impossible for us, the polity, to make good public policy choices around transportation and development. Because the T is so ineffective, it hamstrings our ability to make policy decisions that prioritize public transit over automobile use, which in my opinion limits the possibilities in terms of the region's growth and development and results in a lot of other negative externalities. One of the ways to level the policy playing field is to make policy choices for the kind of transportation systems we want rather than the ones we have (to skate to where the puck is going to be as Bobby Orr would say)-- so, to not build residential parking at Assembly at all or to build it at a higher unit to parking space ratio of say 5:1. Another option is to work to improve mass transit until such a time as consumers choose it over using a private automobile. In reality, it probably has to be a little of both. But the idea that huge swaths of residential parking are good and necessary because people want it or because it helps private developers fill their buildings and charge higher rents is not just silly, it creates a series of perverse public policy choices that serve developers and land owners, not the people.
Again, I recognize that my language here is somewhat provocative and that there are many layers of complexity to the kinds of public policy decisions I am describing here. I do not presume to have all the answers or all the wisdom on these issues. But I do think our debates about the present and future of our city would be enriched here at Archboston and beyond if we start to look beyond the usual neoliberal to libertarian gamut of policy solutions that have dominated urban policy in this country for the last 30 plus years and enlarged our debate to include the kinds of progressive to socialist solutions that have been successful elsewhere and at times here in the US such as the New Deal.
Ok, getting down off my soapbox now.
i'd love to be proven wrong, but i suspect that once whatever "wow, this is new!" sheen wears off -- say 10 or more years from now -- this area will be a ghost-town, particularly if the economy tanks to any degree, whatsoever.
as someone who lives very close to assembly, my observation is that it's great that it's added vibrancy to the area and no doubt pumped $$$ into the local economy, BUT it's essentially a disney-world version of urban life. lots of ugly, prefab, nondescript buildings that dont integrate particularly successfully with the area(s) around them and certainly don't represent any high (or even low/mid) levels of architectural or design achievement. it's like someone took a satellite portion of the northshore mall and plopped it in somerville. i'd love to be proven wrong, but i suspect that once whatever "wow, this is new!" sheen wears off -- say 10 or more years from now -- this area will be a ghost-town, particularly if the economy tanks to any degree, whatsoever.
as someone who lives very close to assembly, my observation is that it's great that it's added vibrancy to the area and no doubt pumped $$$ into the local economy, BUT it's essentially a disney-world version of urban life. lots of ugly, prefab, nondescript buildings that dont integrate particularly successfully with the area(s) around them and certainly don't represent any high (or even low/mid) levels of architectural or design achievement. it's like someone took a satellite portion of the northshore mall and plopped it in somerville. i'd love to be proven wrong, but i suspect that once whatever "wow, this is new!" sheen wears off -- say 10 or more years from now -- this area will be a ghost-town, particularly if the economy tanks to any degree, whatsoever.
I doubt most folks really care about what the buildings look like.
Also, given the location (on 93 and the orange line in Somerville) I doubt we really have to worry about it becoming a ghost town more than any other shopping complex on a major highway.