Cambridge Infill and Small Developments

Vox is the worst placed development. Way to permanently screw Route 2. Should have never been allowed to abut the corridor that close.
 
Why did Lesley have to move the church? Just to activate that corner with new dev?
 
A lot of this is eeewwwww but I do like the density of the buildings, appropriate for the region.

603 Concord could end up good, I'm liking the creative massing so far.
 
BarbaricManchurian said:
A lot of this is eeewwwww but I do like the density of the buildings, appropriate for the region.

603 Concord could end up good, I'm liking the creative massing so far.
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Vox, Hanover, and Atmark all look... Exactly. The. Same.
Any one or all of them could and should have been 12, 15 story towers instead of these land hogs.

603 has a standard construction first (maybe second) floor and the rest I believe were all prefab sections assembled in no time at all.
 
The old story is that Fred Lynn left the Red Sox for the Angels because his wife hated trying to negotiate the Alewife / Fresh Pond Rotaries. All this development in Alewife without proper traffic controls and realignment of the streets north of Concord Avenue might have killed her today.

I see a future failure of good urbanism with these Alewife projects, despite the near supposed infallibility of the Good City of Cambridge.
 
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About how many new apartments are going up in Cambridge? Between South Boston and Cambridge there must be a few thousand, at least.
 
^ and Fenway and Assembly Sq. And its still all not enough fast enough!
 
Brad Plaid said:
Vox, Hanover, and Atmark all look... Exactly. The. Same.
Any one or all of them could and should have been 12, 15 story towers instead of these land hogs.
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Of these, only Vox on 2 really could of benefited from being a tower. That way it could of been set back from route 2, leaving room to fix it in the future. Atmark is bascially a massive streetwall of apartments where before there was nothing. Making it a tower would of been pointless.


JohnCostello said:
The old story is that Fred Lynn left the Red Sox for the Angels because his wife hated trying to negotiate the Alewife / Fresh Pond Rotaries. All this development in Alewife without proper traffic controls and realignment of the streets north of Concord Avenue might have killed her today.

I see a future failure of good urbanism with these Alewife projects, despite the near supposed infallibility of the Good City of Cambridge.
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I think the idea is that renters of these apartments will be tech workers and academics that will commute along the red line to Harvard/Kendall/Downtown and not clog up the roadways during peak hours. They'll walk to do most of their shopping at Fresh Pond Mall / Trader Joes. That's not to say they won't have/use cars but there are a lot of amenities in this area that don't require them for a lot of day to day tasks. Though I suppose in the end time will tell if this viewpoint is valid or just wishful thinking.
 
^No disrespect but the benefit of all of them being towers would, obviously, have been more land available for more construction. Alewife is the Red Line terminus and a no-brainer for lots of density. The units underway now are a good start but only a start and Fresh Pond Mall is ripe for a total overhaul to accommodate the needs of many, many new residents (including housing above the stores and parking garages instead of surface parking lots.)

It is beyond time for an American evolution away from the car in urban areas and away from development schemes that favor them rather than pedestrians. If this means pain for drivers who refuse to change their mindsets and insist on "personal travel pods" no matter the cost (government subsidies of road construction, environmental degradation, commuting hell, etc.) then so be it. No sympathy, let them choke on their own exhaust in the endless traffic they are causing themselves until some kind of common sense kicks in.
 
Well, said, Brad Plaid! Damn the people! Let's cause them pain! Who the hell are they anyway but stupid peons! Yeah! Brad knows best, baby! If bringing about Brad Plaid's utopia means suffering for the stupid, vain and wicked, then so be it! The point of society (and life) is clearly to bring about what Brad knows is best, not to allow people to live their lives as they choose and do what works for them, right?
 
Awesome, lets completely derail this thread into an argument about drivers being entitled and planners being Fascists. That'll be fun.
 
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