Boston Common Overhaul

[DBM]

I don't know why the city accepts this kind of degradation in one of its biggest tourist attractions. The number of stabbings every year in this corner of the park is unacceptable

Every single peer city to Boston in this country is experiencing identical/interchangeable issues and has been for some time. Why don't you go ask all of those big city mayors--NYC, Philly, Baltimore, DC, Miami, Atlanta, SF, Portland, LA, etc. ad nauseum--why they "accept" the kind of "degradation" that characterizes their equivalents to Boston Common?

Otherwise, please go-ahead and try to argue somehow, with whatever statistics you can marshal, that what's happening in Boston is somehow unique or exceptional... I'll wait!

 

[#bancars]

Every single peer city to Boston in this country is experiencing identical/interchangeable issues and has been for some time. Why don't you go ask all of those big city mayors--NYC, Philly, Baltimore, DC, Miami, Atlanta, SF, Portland, LA, etc. ad nauseum--why they "accept" the kind of "degradation" that characterizes their equivalents to Boston Common?

Otherwise, please go-ahead and try to argue somehow, with whatever statistics you can marshal, that what's happening in Boston is somehow unique or exceptional... I'll wait!

I don't think they were saying that the challenges Boston faces on the Common are unique to Boston...I think they were merely pointing out that the City ideally should approach it as a solveable problem and not just throw its hands up and say there's nothing to be done.

 

[sean99090900]

Every single peer city to Boston in this country is experiencing identical/interchangeable issues and has been for some time. Why don't you go ask all of those big city mayors--NYC, Philly, Baltimore, DC, Miami, Atlanta, SF, Portland, LA, etc. ad nauseum--why they "accept" the kind of "degradation" that characterizes their equivalents to Boston Common?

Otherwise, please go-ahead and try to argue somehow, with whatever statistics you can marshal, that what's happening in Boston is somehow unique or exceptional... I'll wait!

I think in a lot of ways many of those cities you've mentioned have it much worse than Boston in my understanding, not that I've spent any time in SF recently. They all accept this problem and the proposed solutions have been very limited in scope and, in my opinion, lacking in vigor and imagination. For example, I like that Eric Adams is trying to bring back mandatory help for the mentally ill in the city, but last I saw, only a few dozen people were ever pulled off the streets be it for reasons of legal caution or whatever else.

The same way I think a lot of people on this board look to transit systems in other countries as evidence that American transit can and should be much better, I look to places like Japan as evidence we don't need to be this cruel to people on our streets. NYC, Philly, Vancouver, DC etc etc are not the best we can do and I think its disingenuous to suggest that this is as good as it gets before trying literally anything. I don't claim to have the correct policy mix in my back pocket, but that doesn't mean I can't be dissatisfied with the status quo.

 

[Java King]

It has become seedier since Covid. Unfortunately, one of the tour companies has or is thinking of moving where they start their tours away from the Visitors Center in the Common to elsewhere due to conditions in the area. Maybe 10 or 15 years ago they fixed up the plaza around Brewer Fountain and it was a pretty nice turnaround for the area to the point I would have lunch there at the tables around the fountain. Since Covid that area has declined and has become too seedy for me to want to eat lunch there. The area is composed of a lot of people with serious mental health and drug problems camped out for the day. Drug use out in the open is much more prevalent than it was 5 years ago. Also, mixed in are slightly disoriented tourists as well as locals walking to the T station or passing through heading elsewhere.

Excellent summary. Yes, I remember the nice metal tables and umbrellas next to the Brewer Fountain, and that's what I was expecting............but it was really sketchy looking now.