City Hall Plaza Revamp | Government Center

Brutalism + fall is always a personal favorite of mine. Would still love to be for this all to be replaced by low-mid rise development...
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For all of the millions and millions of dollars spent here I cant help but feel its just lipstick on a pig. Yea theres some trees and a slide, but all of the elements that make this plaza such a failure remain.

They could have saved all of that money and just opened up a couple spots along the edge of the plaza for private development and developers would have created a much better product with their own money. They should have allowed some low rise brick buildings to be built on the cambridge street side of the plaza, with shops/retail facing both inward and towards cambridge st. and they probably could have even got the developer to foot the bill for a new station entrance at the end of the building. Or maybe they could have built a glass headhouse in the center of the plaza. Idk but there was options.

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It wouldnt have been the greatest plaza on planet earth, but it would have been a million times better than what we have now and it would have been free! Also it would leave open the option of replacing the city hall building with something better in the future that tied into the plaza even better.
 
cburns said:
silly gripe, but of all places in town that could use some visual interest, why were holiday lights not strewn on all of these new trees?
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I don't know if they're putting lights up in City Hall Plaza, but lights are still being put up. The tree lighting on the Common is tomorrow and a bunch of other lights, like along Commonwealth, are turned on at the same time. It's possible those pics at city hall were just taken a few days early for lights. Anyone know for sure?
 
stick n move said:
For all of the millions and millions of dollars spent here I cant help but feel its just lipstick on a pig. Yea theres some trees and a slide, but all of the elements that make this plaza such a failure remain.

They could have saved all of that money and just opened up a couple spots along the edge of the plaza for private development and developers would have created a much better product with their own money. They should have allowed some low rise brick buildings to be built on the cambridge street side of the plaza, with shops/retail facing both inward and towards cambridge st. and they probably could have even got the developer to foot the bill for a new station entrance at the end of the building. Or maybe they could have built a glass headhouse in the center of the plaza. Idk but there was options.

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It wouldnt have been the greatest plaza on planet earth, but it would have been a million times better than what we have now and it would have been free! Also it would leave open the option of replacing the city hall building with something better in the future that tied into the plaza even better.
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No no no, Stick. Once this space is gone it will never come back. Leave it for future generations to have a go at making it into something worthwhile.

Everyone on aB who's always proposing to have the plaza built up needs to remind himself that the Common was once just a cow pasture. In other words, a parking lot for cows instead of cars. Lucky for us people back then didn't seem to think that any sort of building was better than a parking lot.
 
Nemo said:
No no no, Stick. Once this space is gone it will never come back. Leave it for future generations to have a go at making it into something worthwhile.

Everyone on aB who's always proposing to have the plaza built up needs to remind himself that the Common was once just a cow pasture. In other words, a parking lot for cows instead of cars. Lucky for us people back then didn't seem to think that any sort of building was better than a parking lot.
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The Boston Common was a fairly organic development that was cemented in law and further by Olmstead's vision of the Emerald Necklace. Back then, they didn't raze an entire city Square to build the Common like Government Center/City Hall plaza, which is an entirely engineered solution for a problem that never needed to be solved. If anything, the entire thing should be razed again and Scollay Square restored.
 
Nemo said:
No no no, Stick. Once this space is gone it will never come back. Leave it for future generations to have a go at making it into something worthwhile.

Everyone on aB who's always proposing to have the plaza built up needs to remind himself that the Common was once just a cow pasture. In other words, a parking lot for cows instead of cars. Lucky for us people back then didn't seem to think that any sort of building was better than a parking lot.
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first they take away the cow parking then they put those awful duck lanes everywhere. THEYRE RUINING THE CITY
 
Ruairi said:
first they take away the cow parking then they put those awful duck lanes everywhere. THEYRE RUINING THE CITY
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Well, at first everyone followed all the rules with the duck lanes, but THEN people started bringing in the swans and it all went to sh*@t. Those swans hurt when they run into you!
 
The only time I've seen it packed with people was during peak summer when families with kids were absolutely mobbing the playground and water features. It was almost surreal to have that many people in Government Center but it felt great to have that much energy when it's normally so barren. Didn't do anything for the Cambridge Street-side of the plaza though.
 
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