Rose Kennedy Greenway

^ This should have been the consensus from the beginning.
 
I would break up the gun barrel corridor into a dense neighborhood of city blocks, filled with buildings of various heights:

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Found this on somebodies FaceBook, from June 6:

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It's like a rendering, people are actually standing around and conversing on the Greenway. I was like "woahhh".

Anyways, I think that kid in the orange shirt is peeing on something.
 
How to make the Greenway work? Density.
Boston Herald

Have you been frustrated or disappointed by the lack of progress along the Rose Kennedy Greenway? Many people have been. Some feel there should be more activity on the Greenway - a farmer?s market, buskers, gardens, etc. while others wonder why we haven?t seen more commercial and residential development proposals along its perimeter.

The issue was discussed recently on Radio Boston, WBUR?s daily local news program, hosted by Meghna Chakrabarti. An audio feed from the piece can be found here: Bringing Life to Boston?s Greenway.

In the first segment, correspondent Adam Ragusea talks to local architecture critic Robert Campbell about the problems facing the Greenway. Campbell laments spending $3 million annually to maintain the Greenway ?for a handful of skateboarders and joggers.?

Ragusea then walks the Greenway, what he calls a ?gussied-up median strip?. He finds a dearth of activity in its first ?node?, near Chinatown and South Station. Moving on, however, he encounters groups of children playing in the water fountain near Rowes Wharf. Further north, there is a street busker and a (temporary/seasonal) merry-go-round. When he reaches the pergolas near the North End and the Christopher Columbus Park there are crowds of people, both residents and visitors.

Why do some nodes work while others remain un- or underutilized?

In the second segment of the program, host Chakrabarti interviews Matthew Lattell chief of Utile Inc, the firm hired by the city?s Boston Redevelopment Authority to establish development guidelines for the Greenway.

Also interviewed is Tom Piper from the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning who is introduced as a ?long-time observer and critic of the Greenway planning and design process?.

Chakrabarti asks Lattell if the best way to revitalize Greenway is by allowing ?more housing along as much as the park as possible?. He responds that certain sections of the Greenway already have housing and that the guidelines support more residential building including the ?Richardson Block?. (Not mentioned but already approved or in the pipeline are developments including the renovation of the Dainty Dot building and Parcel 24. Also, there is already housing in condomimium projects at Rowes Wharf, the InterContinental, 80 Broad, Greenway Place, and Broadluxe.)

She asks Tom Piper about this, as well, and he responds the Greenway isn?t missing ?teeth?, it?s missing people. He says that Co-director of City Planning for Vancouver, British Columbia Larry Beasley (30 years in the business, ?cool? and ?smart?) has said the Greenway could accommodate 60,000 new residents and as much as 40-million square feet of new development along the Greenway.

Chakrabarti says one reason Vancouver can get density is because ?they?re building pretty tall there?, while here in Boston, there are height restrictions. She challenges guidelines? co-author Lattell on this.

?You?re giving me a stare.? (Boom!)

That?s because the city has released draft guidelines that limit heights along much (most?) of the Greenway. Any sort of buildings - residential or commercial. So to suggest increasing density as a solution to what ails the Greenway is verboten.

Don Chiofaro is the only one to propose an office building of significant height along the Greenway, 600′ or so. (The others are at either end and, according to the draft guidelines released by the BRA, are penciled in as already approved and ready to build.) His proposal has been shot down in no uncertain terms by Mayor Thomas Menino and the Boston Redevelopment Authority, according to published reports.

But if not office towers, then what other ways are there of encouraging other ways of development that could revitalize the Greenway?

Well, look at the North End node - Why does it work? It works because there are people living nearby. People are gravitating toward it because of its open space.

Can we expand on this idea?

In the WBUR talk, Tom Piper (my new hero) says 500,000 students live in and near Boston and the city needs to find a way to ?incent? them to stay (post-grad), and recommends putting them ?in a house? on the Central Artery where we would attract people who would live in the city. ?Grow the city,? in his words. ?The Boston brand is unbelievable,? he says. ?Not a better brand in the world.?

I don?t know if anyone would want tens of thousands, much less hundreds of thousands, of post-graduates along the Greenway but it?s certainly thinking outside the box. (How about in the nearby Seaport District, as an alternative?)

From the beginning, much of the Rose Kennedy Greenway was planned to remain as open space by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, according to Piper from MIT, who blames them for coining it the ?Green? way, and terms it a ?conspiracy by the state.?

Much of the Greenway is in areas not surrounded by residential. But if you don?t allow even office towers, then who will go there? By requiring open space on the Greenway and limiting heights on both sides, you can?t have density. By having four lane roadways on either side you block it off. By having breaks at each block you limit uses (no bikes, no joggers).

The design of the Greenway itself may not change. What can change is how we adapt to its existence.

It took 50 years for the Back Bay to be laid out from planning to building, back in the mid-1800?s. Hopefully, it won?t take 50 years for the Greenway, too.
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BURBex,

For a second I thought that photo you posted was an outtake from "Titanic"!

Toby
 
I don?t know if anyone would want tens of thousands, much less hundreds of thousands, of post-graduates along the Greenway but it?s certainly thinking outside the box. (How about in the nearby Seaport District, as an alternative?)
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Yes, all those "thousands of post-graduates" have clearly trashed the unbelievably awful cities of Cambridge and Somerville. God, imagine what horrible things they'd do to the Greenway. They might play frisbee on it or something. It would totally ruin the clearly intended superfluous-office-park-landscaping feel that downtown worker bees already miss out on so much.
 
I was on top of the Custom House today and noticed one of the parks was fenced off and completely ripped apart with construction equipment on it. What's up there?
 
This is why we can't have nice things (commenter on the WBUR article...this is an NPR listener, even!)

Having recently visited Chicago, I couldn?t help but wonder why our Greenway couldn?t be more ?green? (read: grass), encorporating some of Chicago?s vision as demonstrated in their Millennium Park. Chicago?s Mayor Daley once said that the park exemplifies beautiful architecture (i.e. the Pritzger Pavilion), landscaped and protected parklands, and the ongoing celebration of the arts?. This make me ?green? with envy that that vision hasn?t also been realized in Boston.
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Way to state a conclusion almost totally unsupported by anything that follows it.
 
I don't see the problem here -- the commenter wants the park to have more grass and less pavement, which is a reasonable position to argue.
 
The problem is, grass won't fix what's wrong with the Greenway. Neither will hardscape.

And there really isn't a way to compare Millennium Park (a large rectangle, smartly apportioned by programmed use, framed by four arterial streets) to the Greenway (a segmented linear park, circumstantially apportioned by street crossings, between the opposing lanes of an arterial street).
 
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^Not to mention the fact that Millenium Park really isn't that green (couldn't be if it wanted to given all the varying uses - theater, ice rink, sculptures, etc). Grant Park, yes. Millenium Park, not so much.
 
Ron Newman said:
I don't see the problem here -- the commenter wants the park to have more grass and less pavement, which is a reasonable position to argue.
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The commenter says more grass is the cure for the Greenway's ills and goes on to quote Mayor Daley on Millennium Park's success (which he attributes to lots of factors, including landscaping, which does not just equal grass!) in support. It's totally illogical and illustrates the sort of deranged thought process that can lead people to believe that more amorphous open space can lead to a more vibrant civic space.
 
Based on my admittedly brief visit there, I'd say Millennium Park has a smaller percentage of softscape (grass, trees & shrubs) than the Greenway does.
 
From the BRA Did anyone notice this?

Difra Launches with Demonstration on the Greenway

Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Secretary of Housing and Economic Development, Greg Bialecki launch Seven Day Installation on The Rose Kennedy Greenway-the Intersection of Finance and Innovation.

On Monday, June 7th, Difra Inc., a Boston-based start-up, joined with representatives from the City of Boston, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, MassChallenge, Boston World Partnerships and the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, to unveil its seven-day educational installation: ?Cottage on the Greenway?. The ?Cottage? is a leader in the next generation of home building methodologies. As a nod to Innovation month in Massachusetts, Difra Inc. was selected to showcase its construction technology and highlight the growing innovations in the City of Boston.
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I wonder what type of skills do you need to get a job at city hall or the BRA?
Because you have to be one DUMB Fuck to think building a cottage on the Greenway is economically feasable.
The ?Cottage? is a leader in the next generation of home building methodologies.

The only building methodologies I know is having MONEY.
 
TheRifleman said:
The only building methodologies I know is having MONEY.
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While I think this Cottage thing sounds dumb (I'm holding off my judgment till I see it) MONEY is the means.

Methodology is something completely different.
 
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