Globe Magazine for Sunday, May 27th

[TheBostonBoy]

For all you fans of new development, you definitely should have read the Globe Magazine, which was all about Boston in the next 10 years. It was like 10 pages of good stuff.
To start off, i though it was sick, and the page about the SBW was pretty sick but I hope they do that in 10 years. Also, for trans national place....I was very fascinated by the diagram and how they spoke of it...They made it sound like it was a definite go and that it would be built within in the next 5 years....That seemed ridiculous to me, are they speaking the truth is it like a go now or what??? I would go into the 115 Winthrop Square thread but I don't have time right now so their is probably info in their but I'll check later....

Anyways if Boston looks like that in 10 years, I will change my name to whatever you want

 

[Lrfox]

I read it. some interesting stuff, some fluff, but in any case, it's linked in the 115 Winthrop thread (not part 2). check like the second to last page (before the rant sections).

 

[justin]

A serious newspaper, if it absolutely must needs engage in speculation about plans for the distant future, should do so with bold but well-informed visions aimed at influencing those plans. All that the Globe's spread does is rehash the list of existing development plans, praising every half-baked idea ever thrown out by an elected dimwit (e.g. the Longwood bus tunnel). No news, no insight, no ideas -- pity the ink.

justin

 

[Bobby Digital]

yae not too much new here, but its cool that they're doing it for the citizens that DONT know.... winthrop sq getting built in 3 1/2 years is BS. But the new thread is interesting....

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

That was a hard read. Not because I didn't like the development but because of how it was written, ie not very well.

I did really like the flash things they had. You could finally get a real sense of things....

A sense of how shitty things are gonna be that is.

 

[bosman]

Textually, not that great. Like most of us here, I knew pretty much everything they wrote about. On the website the interactive features were pretty cool though. That's the only redeeming feature that I find about the whole thing. I expected more visions that we haven't seen than repeated common knowledge.

 

[TheBostonBoy]

Ya, it did contain stuff I already knew about building wise. But the part about the technology and whatnot in 2017 was pretty crazy. Everyone using cellphones to do everything...I mean they are important but I don't want our lives to become that simple. We need to do some things to get around, or else we all will become helpless. I don't know, just seemed weird the little prediction for that future. Okay way off topic.

The only thing in the article though was that they made it seem like everything was a definite go. As much as I want a lot of that, I couldn't help but laugh at it since half of it will never happen. Also they should have had a section about development in the Back Bay and Fenway. That would have been cool because a lot is going on in those parts now so in 10 years it should look a lot different, and hopefully a lot taller with buildings like The Clarendon supposedly being built there.

 

[Lrfox]

One thing i noticed- when you click on the "Boston in 2017" article and they have the flash image at the top, 115 Winthrop is in the diagram of Boston, but SST is not. i wonder why?

 

[Padre Mike]

I enjoyed the Globe Magazine this week because it is one in a long tradition of imaging the future of Boston. The first one I remember was in 1961, just after the Seattle World's Fair opened. It opined that Boston was ready for such a fair for the 1976 Bicentennial. It even suggested the site might be Pleasure Bay in South Boston. There was a two-page spread of a picture that I hung in my room afterwards....a soaring, space-age bridge arching over Pleasure Bay, with pavilions lining the shore, futuristic boats zooming across the bay...ah...those romantic times.

Of course it never materialized. The next memorable magazine feature was in the mid-sixties, as Govt. Ctr. was being built, envisioning the "New Boston", the "walk to the sea," and the cleaning up the sub-standard housing that was the the South End. Now that vision had some merit and most of it came to pass.

During the 70's and 80's Globe Magazines focused on new buildings, most of which were architecturally interesting, scattered around the city, and actually finished (though some were scaled down in size). This past week magazine did not have the panache of the past, nor the idealistic vision of a city slowly emerging into the late 20th C.

Maybe I have changed, my disillusion may be getting the best of me after witnessing so many false starts and slovenly finishes in Boston. On Memorial Day I witnessed children playing in the newly renovated Columbus Park, trying on that warm day to play in the new fountain jets, but frustrated because no one bothered to turn on the fountain. I walked by the ridiculously over planted park in front of the Aquarium and wondered who will rake all those damned oak leaves in the spring and fall and who will going to trim the thousands of yew bushes planted so close together on parts of the greenway? I looked at dead bushes that were planted last year along the road near Chinatown and the dead tree stumps and rotting pavement in Copley Sq.. I've seen a lot that should have been beautiful, but that is not being cared for lack of funds and lack of will...so unlike Chicago, for example.

And so I wonder if all the technological dreams that are to built into the Winthrop Sq. tower will work properly, five years down the line. Will they be maintained, or abandoned as high tech follies? Will the public be prevented from going up to the rooftop garden, they have been unceremoniously kicked out of the Rowes Wharf, the Customs House and the Hancock observatories? Anyone else here just wondering too?

 

[TheBostonBoy]

Ya that is great Mike.. I agree with what you said about things being taken care of. Boston always dreams of beautiful things and then if and when they get built, they are taken care of for like a year, then forgotten about or go uncared. It bothers me alot and I also have been wondering about the future for the Greenway and Trans National Place (if built)

 

[kennedy]

ugh...ignorant sob's. "hey did you see that article in globe magazine yesterday? wowee, that tower sure was neat. luxury shopping center, well thats just spiffy!"

thats the only thing i heard monday. i almost felt sorry for them, so i gave them this link.