Rose Kennedy Greenway

I'm pretty sure that shipping container is where they store a bunch of stuff for the Farmer's Market (tables, chairs, etc)
 
In the dead of winter they can't move it out? I know there are companies that specialize in the whole 'pod' concept... must not be owned by anyone's nephew though.

Edit: On a less cynical note, this piece of public art isn't my favorite but it's not terrible either. The problem, and which is no fault of the artist, is that the Greenway overall thinks too small. It's nice to have some public art sprinkled randomly around to welcome commuters out of South Station, but it isn't coherent. If we must have a large swath of Greenway adjacent to the water, why can't the whole thing be one coherent modern sculpture garden?

Something like this writ large:
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Filling this space with public art - which both tourists and locals might actually enjoy wandering around and which might, god forbid, become a destination - could bring a wonderful amount of life to this area in all seasons. It's also not mutually exclusive with the hort soc's flower gardens, the hopeful "garden under glass", the Armenian memorial, etc. If we must have a Greenway, why must we not have a vision?

Edit #2: The last question is rhetorical, please no smaht answers. This isn't the comments tab of the Herald.
 
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Any chance the DeCordova Museum folks could be made interested in this idea?
 
I honestly think there would be a huge protest over this if they tried it.

People want their open space (i.e. lawns) open, not cluttered with sharp jagged metal contraptions! Not safe for the kiddies you know.

And god forbid they put in something that is not 'pretty'. It will suffer the same fate as the Partisans statue on the Common.

It would be nice to be proven wrong about this though.
 
If we must have a large swath of Greenway adjacent to the water, why can't the whole thing be one coherent modern sculpture garden?
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Sort of a modern take on the Comm Ave mall (but with the empasis on art rather than memorials)?
 
I suggested this way back in this thread (one of my first posts here actually), before I went on a road trip to NYC, DC, and Chicago. While I was in these three cities I saw some of the greatest parks, imho, that America has; Central Park in NYC, the National Mall in DC, and Millennium Park in Chicago. The main thing I noticed was that while these parks were all amazing, they really only served singular purposes and were actually poor in some regards.

Central Park is a respite for the people of New York. It is designed in such a way that the city dissolves around you as soon as you cross into the park. Its hills and valleys are great at masking the sounds of the city and are absolutely beautiful. It works in New York because there is no real ?nature? in the city. Central Park acts basically as a forest for those that experience a heavily built environment every day. While this is great for the city dwellers, I found that when I wanted to walk across it (going from the hostel I stayed at and heading to the Guggenheim and museum mile and such), it was basically impossible to figure out a) where I was and b) what path would get me to any given point in the park. I had to ask strangers on multiple occasions how to get to a certain place, and I was actually asked many times how to get to other parts of the park by people that were just as confused as I was. This park is absolutely beautiful and great for the people in the city, but its sheer size and confusing layout create a bit of a burden for a newcomer to the park.

The National Mall is a park created for views and gatherings. Its vast expanses of grass allow one to have stunning views of the memorials, museums, and government buildings lining its perimeter, as well as have enormous gatherings of people right in the heart of our nation?s capitol. I noticed the Mall?s flaw when I decided to walk from the Washington memorial to the Lincoln memorial. This park has no shade. While the vast openness allows you to see the buildings, and I am sure this space is the reason why there have been all those great marches on Washington and such, from a ?park? perspective it kind of fails. On a hot muggy day (which there are plenty of in DC due to it being built on a marsh) there is nowhere to get out of the sun. Playing sports and reading a book are kindof out of the question in my opinion in this park because you would get heat stroke in an hour out there. Enjoying this park is merely enjoying looking at the park, it is really not one to physically interact with in any meaningful way.

I loved Millennium Park. Being a modern art history buff just seeing ?Cloud Gate? (A.K.A. ?the Bean?) was enough for me to love Chicago. Milenium Park works because it is small and active. It is, in stark contrast to the Mall, a park intended to be experienced. In it?s small footprint there is a performance venue, world class sculpture, a large interactive fountain, a flower garden, a memorial, a gift shop, a restaurant, etc, etc, etc. Its density and creativity are what make it a great park. It is a park for the tourists. It connects directly to the Chicago Art Institute, and is nearby to all the major tourist draws of the downtown. As a tourist destination it is great, as a local park it kind of fails. There is no open space to play or sunbathe, and once the visual stimulus wears off you can?t help but wonder if Frank Ghery and Anish Kapour will be considered ugly in 20 years. From what I noticed there were no locals in the park. In fact I talked with a guy working at a stupid souvenir shop at like 10 at night and he was telling me how people that live in the city will go to events at the pavilion, but they would never just say ?hey lets go to millennium park for a while,? mostly because there is not much housing near it. (I know that Grant Park is surrounding Millennium Park with tons of open space to play in and such, but lets just leave it for now)

I think that the Greenway can learn a lot from these mega parks. From Central park we can learn that a getaway is great, but there should still be an underlying logic to the layout. From DC we can learn that open space and vistas are not all that a park should be. Shade and points of interest are what make the park. Millennium Park teaches us that art and density can truly make a small park, but do not forget about the people in your city and their wants and needs. So, as a park, The Greenway needs a lot of help, but it has so damn much potential. Because of its shape, there are many different things that can be done. First of all it needs to be less broken up by cross streets, but this fact that it is cut up can help with its delineation of spaces. Small parks (such as Millennium Park) can be interesting beyond belief, if planned out correctly. If some parcels are developed into parks heavily adored with sculpture or monuments, while others are left with just a single fountain or just partial shaded grass, it would create a very interesting string of parks that could rival some of the ones I talked about above.

Sorry for writing so much? it just kind of fell out of my mind. hopefully this can continue the discussion of making the Greenway more complete as opposed to just ragging on it more! Hehehe.
 
5Dollar, did you go to any of the other NYC parks? There are lots of them, but some of the better-known ones include Bryant Park, Washington Square Park, Union Square, Madison Square Park, Gramercy Park and, though new, Hudson River Park and the High Line Park.

To me, something like Central Park or the National Mall is more analogous to the Common -- the main, centrally located, sprawling green space in the city, home to monuments, playing fields and plenty of places to lie down and read or play frisbee on a sunny day.

Although the above-mentioned NYC parks are all very different (Gramercy Park, e.g., is private), I think they're more apt comparisons to the Rose Kennedy Lawn for a few reasons: they're smallish parks that, while secondary to the likes of the city's "marquee" park, are nonetheless in busy, "downtown" locations.

What all of those parks do successfully is to seamlessly merge with their surroundings. Rather than restrict development around them, they are central squares for the surrounding development, some of which can be very tall (especially in Bryant Park, arguably the most dramatic and impressive of the bunch) and all of which interacts with the parks in question. Workers from the high-rises surrounding Bryant Park and Madison Square Park stream into the grassy common for lunch in spring and summer, and depending on the park, Wimbledon-watching in August, Christmas-market shopping in December, ice-skating and mulled wine in January, Shake Shack burgers year round, and so on.

Union Square and Washington Square Park are younger, full of students and bohemians and all the energy coming off of their drum circles, hackey sacks, devil sticks, fair-trade coffee trading sessions, and whatever else the NYU trustafarians do. But it works. Similarly, Gramercy Park may be private, but it exists for those around it. And the High Line and Hudson River Park, more recent additions, have fancy high-rise condos sprouting up like mushrooms around (and, literally, over) them, bringing fashion designers and glitterati into the condos and out-of-town gawkers who want to catch a glimpse of the jet set.

The point is that these parks work very well because they cater to their surroundings and the people who live and work nearby. They don't try to be everything for everyone, or replicate the "universal park" model that, say a Central Park, Prospect Park, Millennium/Grant Park or Common/Public Garden might. They don't try too hard; they work for the people around them, and tourists are drawn to them because they are drawn to the energy and authenticity of these places.

As the "second" park in town, the Rose Kennedy Lawn, I think, could learn a lot from those types of places. Cater to the people who work and live nearby. Integrate seamlessly with the neighborhoods around. In the case of the Lawn, that would mean not being surrounded by a highway and allowing condos, offices and retail to encroach on the park. To emphasize the fact that, yes, you are in a city and that's not a bad thing, allow interesting, tall buildings to go up all around the park -- a canyon of buildings, not some lame sculpture, will the most fascinating thing for people to look at ... and height limits kill that.

It's unclear exactly what plans there for the various plots now. One might have residential, or it may have a touristy, seemingly pointless "history" museum on it. Others are getting monolithic landscrapers of condos. There's been talk about performing arts centers, crystal flower palaces, and who knows what else. It all seems a little too grand, and too pie-in-the-sky. What concrete things make sense to me? I guess that'd be: 1) Scrapping any of this populist nonsense about height limits; 2) Allowing a few of the parcels to be built on and, in so doing, breaking up the parcels so that a few developers build thin, diverse buildings without being able to lay one landscraper across the entire plot; 3) Dramatically reducing the number of lanes of traffic on each side of the Rose Kennedy Lawn; 4) Scrapping grand plans and tourist-trap white elephant projects and accepting that these parks should service, and integrate into, the various neighborhoods they adjoin.

... And that's what the secondary parks of Boston, like Post Office Square, Union Park, the Comm Ave Mall, Copps Hill Burial Ground, and the Paul Revere Mall all do as well. I'd take any of them over this Rose Kennedy mess ...
 
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What should be done with all the wasted space, and the too-wide streets of the avenue in the right of this picture? (Avenue is pictured at about its mid-point.)

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Several examples of what was done elsewhere when the highway was no longer:

Portland Oregon, Harbor Drive and McCall Park

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San Francisco, the Embaracdero and Octavia Boulevard

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What Seoul did is even more interesting.

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The highway was apparently decked over a river.
 
The greenway right now is still like an empty template for a future park. You've got the basics, the grass planted, the trees, the paths laid down...but their is literally nothing else there. All this is right now is glorified landscaping in between two streets. Its good for nothing besides a pleasant atmosphere when you walk through it.

The greenway needs to add all kinds of attractions around it. Now, i haven't been there for at least a few months, but if i recall, there are no vendors, no sculptures, no memorials, no restaurants on the parcels, etc. etc. Literally, you have to reason to be on the greenway. The best thing that was on the greenway was that NBA championship blow up trophy, and from the looks of it, that won't be coming back this spring. I'm hoping all these plans to building memorials mesuems and buildings will happen, because that will make the greenway something you visit, not something you pass through.
 
You guys are living in a fantasy. All these examples were widely discussed in the years leading up to the actual realization of the Greenway, and were quickly forgotten/dismissed as the highway authority built the most basic, unimaginitive landscape possible. But now that it's open space, people in Boston will lay down their lives before it's touched in any significant way. Okay, you might be able to move a boulder here or there, and rearrange some trees, but it's going to be a massive uphill battle to make the kind of changes (to road alignments and building patterns) that would really make this a functioning urban space.

Give it up for dead.
 
czsz said:
You guys are living in a fantasy. All these examples were widely discussed in the years leading up to the actual realization of the Greenway, and were quickly forgotten/dismissed as the highway authority built the most basic, unimaginitive landscape possible. But now that it's open space, people in Boston will lay down their lives before it's touched in any significant way. Okay, you might be able to move a boulder here or there, and rearrange some trees, but it's going to be a massive uphill battle to make the kind of changes (to road alignments and building patterns) that would really make this a functioning urban space.

Give it up for dead.
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Because there is so little depth between the surface ground level and the top of the tunnels, one is limited in how high one can build without enormous and expensive cantilevering, and all the mechanicals etc that one might normally place in a basement have, instead, to go on the ground floor.
 
czsz said:
You guys are living in a fantasy. All these examples were widely discussed in the years leading up to the actual realization of the Greenway, and were quickly forgotten/dismissed as the highway authority built the most basic, unimaginitive landscape possible. But now that it's open space, people in Boston will lay down their lives before it's touched in any significant way. Okay, you might be able to move a boulder here or there, and rearrange some trees, but it's going to be a massive uphill battle to make the kind of changes (to road alignments and building patterns) that would really make this a functioning urban space.

Give it up for dead.
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After spending 12 Billion or 15 Billion whatever the price tag is at this point. Not included the maintaince tag per month. I would rather have the highway because I am feeling squeezed to death in my paycheck in these tough times. I'm sure I'm not alone.
 
TheRifleman said:
After spending 12 Billion or 15 Billion whatever the price tag is at this point. Not included the maintaince tag per month. I would rather have the highway because I am feeling squeezed to death in my paycheck in these tough times. I'm sure I'm not alone.
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I don't think the city should be paying for any of the type of development along/on the Greenway that I suggested. Again, there's good models to look to in NYC. New parks there -- the Hudson River Park, Brooklyn Bridge Park, the High Line -- are not being funded by the city for the most part. Instead, the city allows development on/around the parks, and those developments alone are taxed to pay for park construction and maintenance.

By taking some of the more-pointless lawn parcels of the RKG (they're sort of zombie parcels ... the grassy undead) and building retail/residential on them, you a) whittle down the size of the park, reducing maintenance fees, and b) can rely on these new developments for park maintenance fees to at least some extent, as in NYC.

Removing lanes of traffic would be more difficult and would probably be paid for by the city. But that doesn't have to happen immediately (and could also be offset by asking developers to shoulder some of the burden).

CZ, the RKG is a work in progress. Like the Common, it will evolve over time. In that, I don't mean that trees will grow in, making our suburban Greenway habitat more arborific. I mean that the uses of the parcels as allowed by the city and residents will be shaped by new ideas. Look at the current plans (as far as I can tell): a performing arts center, headed by none other than Ron Druker; a "Boston Museum" that has no funding; a Crystal Palace winter garden paid for by the bankrupt Mass Horticultural Society; a YMCA; a Harbor Islands pavilion. Some of these have been more or less scratched and none of these things appears likely to happen.

I think that as newspapers like the Globe, Herald, etc., are increasingly complaining about the suckiness of the park and the dawning realization that where we once hoped for whatever cultural amenities, there's now empty parcels, we're more likely to see a willingness to move from the planned uses -- especially once Boss Menino and his team of bureaucrats with vested interests in the existing plans shuffles off the scene, leaving the zombie parcels still underutilized.

My complaint is that the city seems to have wanted the Greenway to be a big tourist draw, so it littered its plans with expensive, suburbanite-attracting marquee projects (the "white elephant" approach). They're inherently lame because they don't integrate the surrounding neighborhoods very well and instead replicate the Fanueil Hall model of city-as-amusement park for out-of-towners. But since Menino decided that was what he wanted, what's more relevant here is that those projects are expensive, usually requiring both private and public dollars. Combined with their inherent flaws, the recession makes them unlikely.

As the years pass and we're stuck with undeveloped parcels that are both fairly pointless even to a public that sometimes appears obsessed with "green space" as well as expensive to maintain, I think/hope there'll be a gradual move (born of necessity more than anything else) toward putting shops, restaurants and housing on the parcels rather than glass gardens, "community centers" or concert halls. And, Rifleman, those privately owned initiatives are much less likely to demand your tax dollars than any of the Grands Projets currently (?) planned.
 
Agree ^100% if the city and state followed through with Private development to fund the maintaince of the Greenway.
 
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