General Boston Discussion

They did propose to build an indoor winter garden (which I would assume would have some retail in it) in front of the the Hancock Tower, but the neighbors flipped out at losing their precious "open space." It boggles the mind how they could prefer to have a windswept plaza that is basically unusable most days of the year vs some nice publicly accessible indoor space at the same location. This is basically what happened with 100 Federal. The plaza was barren and useless. The new indoor space is quite nice!
 
An interesting read to be sure (I'm only a couple of "pages" in). I'll be sharing this one.

Thanks for posting, statler.
 
The main cause of all of our housing sorrows is our suburban housing crisis.
 
Yes; starting with the usual suspects just outside Boston's corporate limit–to the near suburbs just beyond 128 near their CR stations.

odurandina said:
The day may be coming when state law mandates cities and towns to do projects such as this–at this scale. The process that brings the needed change is unclear.
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Actually would have to agree - Boston along can't build enough housing for the entire metro area.
 
There are way too many towns with snob zoning in the Boston area, restricting homes to an acre or larger lot. That in itself will create a housing shortage.
 
Heh... 1 Dalton is only 654 ft according to that map. Odurandina and DHZ's head's are going to explode.
 
:( This is sad.. This is why we can't have nice things.

South End: Commission to Remove Landwave Sculptures

Link to Article

The blue-and-green tiled waves alongside Peter’s Park in the South End will be no more.

After years of strife between community members of the South End and the Boston Arts Commission, the board voted 4-3 to remove the two Landwave sculptures in Peter’s Park at hearing on Tuesday, May 8.

...

[But] what was considered a beautiful concept in theory turned out to present many problems once installed.

Throughout the years, the sculpture has encountered a brutal beating from children attending Little League games at the baseball field adjacent to it and been used as an urban skatepark by kids on BMX bikes and skateboards.
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I dunno I always felt like the landwave was a barrier to the park from the street.
 
One teensy observation from today: There's a plaque on the ground on Tremont in front of the Omni Parker House advising pedestrians to "look up and see the Old North Church in front of you." Thing is... the new Gov't Center head house pretty much blocks the view. You can sort of see the church steeple still if you look through the glass and around some of the support structure, but the effect of the view is certainly not what was intended (or what it used to be). Seems like something an observant NIMBY might have picked a fight with when the head house was proposed.
 
It was brought up a few times. It's a classic example of why you don't (literally) carve your city planning ideas in stone.
 
statler said:
It was brought up a few times. It's a classic example of why you don't (literally) carve your city planning ideas in stone.
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And of course, it probably wasn’t visible before they demolished everything in Scollay.
 
General Boston problem: the problem is the number and tiny size of surrounding municipalities. Everything is Balkanized… We had a brief glimmer of romantic unification with the coincidence of the city beautiful movement and metropolitan area based authorities… sadly, at a time when this is needed the most, we are living in an era of atomization.
 
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