Greenway District Planning Study

Re: BRA Meeting on the Greenway District Planning Study

JohnAKeith said:
Is the city making a land-grab now that the State Rep for that area is out-of-office?
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An interesting observation. Boss Menino is shrewd enough to take advantage of a power vacuum.

Sal LaMatnina was there for the North End. I didn't see anyone from Chinatown. And no Sam Yoon or Mike Flaherty either. Maybe their people were there, hidden...
 
Re: BRA Meeting on the Greenway District Planning Study

I still don't see how some people are getting the idea that this is some secret City Hall plot to tear down blocks of the North End (or Chinatown, for that matter).
 
Re: BRA Meeting on the Greenway District Planning Study

You guys are crazy. This is not a secret plot to tear down blocks of towers in the Financial District, nor is it a plan to redistrict swaths of the North End. It is simply a study to see how the Greenway area should be planned - what are the guiding principles. With your input at these meetings, you can help develop those principles.
 
Re: BRA Meeting on the Greenway District Planning Study

Of course the North End will not be touched, bulldozed, or rezoned. Duh. The 55' height limit won't be re-considered obviously.

The goal of this study is to limit development in the Financial District. To kill the Aquarium garage site as a potential develop-able plot... to put the breaks on removing the Government Center garage... to add another level of scrutiny/study to every Financial District development from here on out... to add another layer of red tape.

And this new layer of governmental red tape is being decided upon by little old busybody park ladies and retirees from multimillion dollar condos and not reasonable development types.

This study is not advertised as "Re-thinking all future development in the urban core of Boston" it is instead given the Trojan Horse name of "Greenway planning study"

A little truth in advertising would be nice over at the BRA.

That's why the meetings will be full of park ladies if the business community does not wake up to this and let their voices be heard.
 
Re: BRA Meeting on the Greenway District Planning Study

Okay, I don't want to take this off-topic, but if anyone cares to express themselves, I'm curious.

It's the age-old question. Who should decide what gets built on the Greenway, or anywhere else? Those who live in proximity, whose lives are affected by it, daily, or by others who don't have any vested interest, who can take an unbiased view and make their decisions based on the "common good" and/or their own biases?

Why shouldn't the little old ladies get to decide?

I'm not saying they should, I'm just trying to flush this out.

Why shouldn't those across the street from Columbus Center get to say what's good or bad? And/or, the people who live in Prudential Plaza?

Do these people get an "extra" vote, due to proximity? Should they?

Who does decide?

Why should the BRA get to decide? Is it better or worse that the city's planning department is also its development department?
 
Re: BRA Meeting on the Greenway District Planning Study

I agree with you John. So the tens of thousands of Financial District workers should have their voices far outweighing the few hundred Financial District residents.

But, this study is falsely billed as a "greenway" study, not a Financial District re-zone. So the tens of thousands of workers stay home and the "don't f** with my multimillion dollar view" and the "grass is just lovely" residents inundate the meeting.

I'm just saying that this is a very important and historic planning study. I know I sound alarmist, but I really feel this study needs a whole lot of support from those of us who want to see progress in the city's urban core.
 
Re: BRA Meeting on the Greenway District Planning Study

JohnAKeith said:
Who does decide?
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This is a very good question. I'm guessing the majority opinion on this board will be that the people that own the land should have almost unilateral say on what get built on their property. Of course, you run into the 'Houston argument' with that.

Ideally, you should have actual urban design experts making most of the decisions, but unfortunately, most 'experts' are anything but.

The problem with give neighborhood groups getting an extra vote is that what gets built will ultimately outlast them and the neighbors have no incentive to care about any truly long term impact a building might have on the city. But to be fair neither do most developers.

And so we are stuck with current mess of a collaboration between government, experts, neighborhood groups and developers. :/
 
Re: BRA Meeting on the Greenway District Planning Study

The issue isn't that little old ladies in the North End have too much power. The issue is that little old ladies in the North End don't realize how much blocking these projects hurts them because the link is counterintuitive. If anything, fault lies with the experts who haven't done their job explaining that you can't block every single project and expect affordable housing, jobs, and cheap groceries.
 
This entire discussion of input on development issues in Boston is a weed-induced debate similar to the hubristic questioning of noiseless trees falling in woods.

The mayor makes all decisions. Period. Little old ladies are only given relevance when they support the mayor's wishes. And city commissions are rubber stamps, with Landmarks being particularly disgraceful because of the added onus of hypocrisy.

Everybody who is making the ACTUAL decisions in any given development case, is dependent on the mayor for either their position or paycheck.
 
Re: BRA Meeting on the Greenway District Planning Study

Ron Newman said:
I still don't see how some people are getting the idea that this is some secret City Hall plot to tear down blocks of the North End (or Chinatown, for that matter).
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No one suggested that, either.
 
What an inconclusive discussion appears in this thread! Only point of agreement is that the present process is wrong.
 
Re: BRA Meeting on the Greenway District Planning Study

statler said:
Ideally, you should have actual urban design experts making most of the decisions, but unfortunately, most 'experts' are anything but.
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This has worked well at times when the experts weren't bogus (Haussmann's Paris), but it's not democratic.

Another technical aspect of government is the military. Should we hold citizen meetings to advise generals on how to win battles?
 
The defense from the citizens would be, "We let government make the decisions; the results were Charles River Park and I-695."
 
Re: BRA Meeting on the Greenway District Planning Study

ablarc said:
This has worked well at times when the experts weren't bogus (Haussmann's Paris), but it's not democratic.
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I think we have had this discussion before: the two most famous professional urban planners are Haussmann and Moses. The question is, how do you pick the next former and steer clear of the next latter?
 
^ Well, popularity is no criterion; Haussmann was as unpopular with the people as Moses --and for the same reasons.

Planning has mostly involved a mix of new construction and demolition. You can't expect folks to be happy if their places are taken and demolished.

But these controversies in Boston don't involve people losing their property or favorite places. After all, who wants to keep the City Hall and Harbor Tower Parking Garages? Not these buildings' owners and not the public.

Unlike with Haussmann and Moses: it's not the demolition that upsets people in Boston, it's the new construction --and it will be opposed no matter what.

Boston is populated by Luddites.
 
It seems that the heavy hitters in town like Chirafaro, Druker, and company don't send lobbyist-esque proxies to these meetings to counter all of the neighborhood opposition. To those who attended the meeting earlier this week, did you get the impression that such people were there to defend the importance of building in the city?

If the big developers and business owners actually do this (in which I would hope that they do), the local media never seems to voice these opinions. If the media is in fact liberal-slanted, then I guess that liberal = NIMBY in this town.
 
^ You'd think a more natural fit would be "conservative = NIMBY." Both conservatives and NIMBYs are supposed to be against change.

Maybe liberals are really conservatives.

(Or maybe everyone's so muddleheaded they don't know how to make sense.)
 
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