Charles River Park | West End

[czsz]

None of the "Back Bay Scale" slides are actually of the Back Bay. One is Bay State Road, one is the South End, and one is the Common.

 

[Ron Newman]

Bay State Road is commonly considered an extension of the Back Bay. Its architecture and scale are similar to Marlboro or Beacon streets.

(I lived on Bay State Road from 1975-79.)

 

[JohnCostello]

Walter Muir Whitehill always considered Bay State Road and most of BU, at least as far as the Cottage Farm (BU) Bridge as a legitimate expansion of the Back Bay due to the continuation of the Back Bay grid to some degree and the common Back Street seawall.

 

[Ron Newman]

The Back Bay architectural style pretty much disappears beyond Granby Street, though. I think one or two 'Back Bay' buildings went up west of that before the whole development ran out of steam. They got absorbed into BU.

 

[czsz]

I was just trying to make a catty point, since Bay State Rd. is technically in Fenway/Kenmore.

But I would say Bay State Road is slightly unique. The presence of grassy lawns in abundance makes it feel much less hyperurban than the Back Bay proper. There seems to be slightly more variegation in the architecture as well - you don't see neo-Georgian on the other side of Mass. Ave.

 

[Shepard]

Slide 42: These should be new streets to as much an extent as possible, not vague "pedestrian connections."

IMHO.

 

[kz1000ps]

This whole place is just bizarre:

 

[itchy]

What an abominable waste of space. Prime, perfect, central space of such potential. What a waste.

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

Those pictures are painful to look at. If they had just built a typical suburban office park there at least it would have been honest.

 

[Shepard]

Boston's Brasilia.

 

[ablarc]

^ Brasilia will lodge a slander suit.

 

[Joe_Schmoe]

Those new three story buildings are the very definition of adding insult to injury.

 

[BarbaricManchurian]

^ Brasilia will lodge a slander suit.

bullshit. What parts of planned Brasilia are more urbanistically successful than CRP (meaning, not including the slums)?

 

[ablarc]

http://images.google.com/images?q=b...&oi=image_sil&resnum=10&tbnid=0jC2HPpLjXMSFM:

Seems like a wash to me.

 

[BarbaricManchurian]

Much lower average density, much less public transportation, much bigger empty parks, I'm sorry, but it's at least 10x worse than CRP.

tell me one thing about this picture that's better than CRP

 

[ablarc]

It's cherrypicked.

 

[czsz]

tell me one thing about this picture that's better than CRP

It actually has a design philosophy?

 

[Shepard]

An overarching design philosophy doesn't make Brasilia - or any development for that matter - work. On the contrary Brasilia was planned according to the most anti-urban of modernist design principles. Granted almost every major building there is a masterpiece compared to anything in CRP but in terms of planning it's autopia ad extremum.

Yes the townhomes in CRP look like CRaP. But at least it's added density and diversity and filled in space. It seems to be headed in the right direction - maybe one day they'll open the pedestrian pathways to traffic (which paradoxically would also increase foot traffic) and thereby weave together the area with the city.

Brasilia has no hope. All the energy is in the surrounding favellas.

 

[czsz]

Just because it's autotopia doesn't mean it isn't coherent or doesn't have a philosophy. It's beautiful in concept, it just produces horrible externalities.

 

[Ron Newman]

A statistic that I don't know how to check: what is the population of the current Charles River Park compared to the former West End? CRP has fewer builidngs but much taller ones.