Whig, completely agree with your latter statement. That's why I said, "MassDOT represents everyone in the state (including Khata and Whiglander), not just those of us in Boston that want a liveable city." I wasn't taking a potshot at you. I was acknowledging that your wants are every bit as legitimate as mine (externalities excluded).
But, I wonder if you're really that concerned about Boston being a "liveable city". If Boston existed only as an amusement park city with all the same museums, restaurants, and shops, but none of the people, wouldn't you be just as happy? (Or perhaps happier).
AMF -- No -- you can't have a just "Amusement Park City" -- the closest to that kind of place that I can think of is Venice -- even there you need to have background services to support the "Extras and others" who play a role to make the city amusing.
I've often described Boston as the most humanly influenced city in the US and possibly the modern world. I also find it one of the most fascinating cities among all of the cities where I've lived for a short time or visited on my various travels. Yes, Boston has fine restaurants, some exceptional museums, one of the 3 best halls to hear music performed by one of the world's elite ochestras, lots of nice old houses to visit, the Freedom Tril, the oldest commissiond warship in world, and a very pleasant waterfront to walk along.
However to think that those are all there is in Boston would be to miss the main point entirely that I've tried to explain and expound upon in my various posts.
Boston has been a fascinating work of creation for nearly four centuries. I'm guessing that the Rev. Blackstone arrived about 1625 and constructed the first permanent dwelling where the Soldiers and Sailors monument is located on the Common. Actually as we found when the digging for old John Hancock tower was underway -- construction had already been done much earlier (though no permanent residences) -- a quite impressive fish weir (to be recreated as part of the new exhibit on the Charles at the MOS).
I've been a student of the evolution of Boston from a small settlement to an International Center for several decades. I've walked the perimeter of the original Shawmut Peninusula, every street in the Back Bay, to and fro between MIT and Castle Island. I've purchsed many maps, books and other documents which chronicle the process of the making of Boston and how it influenced the making of the US.
Ever since the John Winthrop party bought the Common from the Rev. B in 1630 -- and created the first publicly owned park in perhaps the world -- there has been a tension between public and private values and goals. This tension has played out in Boston in the transportation sector perhaps more so than any city in the US.
Nearly every square foot of soil or water within the city limits was once somewhere else -- often provoking major debate in the process. Early-on the courts had to decide about ownrship and permission to use tidelands [Today's Chapter 91]. Later there were disputes involving filling of the Back Bay and the other water and mud flats which make-up most of the highly developed parts of the City, and the places to be developed intensively for the next few decades [SPID, Beacon Park]. When the ancestors of the T started building rails in the streets and then in tunnels, back over 100 years ago, they faced many NIMBYs.
All of the above makes Boston (and Cambridge) not just a "city under glass" for tourists -- but a real-life organic entity -- a place of endless fascination -- perhaps even a bit of an obsession.
Note -- Yesterday was not only Flag Day -- it was the 237th birthday of the U.S. Army -- which was organied on what is now Cambridge Common -- also the place where George Washington accepted his command of the U.S. Army
