Rose Kennedy Greenway

This project was orignally proposed for Boston Common. I don't know when it got redirected to the Greenway, but it's a good idea that I look forward to seeing next week when I return to Boston.
 
Saw the hammock today at lunch...it's neat but too small.

My preconception was of this giant netting people could jump on and chill but really it's just like 8 people crammed into a slightly oversized hammock and afraid to move around too much.

Something huge would be an injury nightmare but it would also be the ideal size for the professor's idea imo.

Also it is too 'exhibity' with that guy hanging around and fliers and a signboard etc....they need to back off and just let people use it and discover it for themselves.
 
I know that a certain percentage of this board will always be pissed that this wasn't a necklace of "1000 footers" or whatever the going rate for a "world class city", and they are predetermined to hate any urban greenspace that asserts itself as anything more than parsley around some piggish building, but for the first time since it was built I left the Greenway genuinely excited for its future. With time, thoughtful tinkering and investment maybe this can be improved upon it. Does it need infill building? Bike lanes? Transit? Yes, of course, all of those. But what is the point of 382 pages of bickering and pessimism? These parks are definitely more than these boards suggest, and I think creative minds should be identifying opportunities for improvement--there are plenty of reactionaries out there to just piss pessimism down the leg of this thing.
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Sometimes it's so refreshing to get hit with an unexpected wave of perspective on this Board. Thank you Pierce.
 
If they put this on the High Line people would saying it was greatest thing ever and "Why can't Boston ever do anything cool like that?"
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I think the High Line is just as gimmicky an attraction as any ever thought up in Boston. The only reason the High Line trumps the Greenway is that it doesn't consume a wide swath of city with dead space and accommodate a ridiculous tonnage of the traffic it was designed to replace.

This project was orignally proposed for Boston Common.
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Again, the more successful the Greenway, the less utilized other city parks. At best it just redistributes the life of the city; it can't really add to it.
 
czsz said:
Again, the more successful the Greenway, the less utilized other city parks. At best it just redistributes the life of the city; it can't really add to it.
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So urban open space is a closed system? A great park can't generate new uses and users? How is it that a new tower with a million square feet of office space is not just stealing people from down the street?
 
Okay, it's not a fully closed system. But where do new users come from? Without actually building much new residential space, or improving access from existing neighborhoods to new parks (via, for example, rapid and direct transit) the city's parks have a largely fixed number of potential recreational users. Are that many people going to make day trips into the city because of the existence of the Greenway as opposed to the existence of Boston's already established parks?

The dynamics of commercial real estate speculation are obviously complicated, but in theory, office towers are built to accommodate already percolating economic activity that will move into them. Developers don't expect the construction of new towers in and of themselves to generate that much new activity. And developers don't think of a city's office space as a total system; they don't care if an older building becomes abandoned and has to be creatively reused because their developments sucked the life out of it. Parks are a different story.
 
czsz said:
Okay, it's not a fully closed system. But where do new users come from? Without actually building much new residential space, or improving access from existing neighborhoods to new parks (via, for example, rapid and direct transit) the city's parks have a largely fixed number of potential recreational users. Are that many people going to make day trips into the city because of the existence of the Greenway as opposed to the existence of Boston's already established parks?

The dynamics of commercial real estate speculation are obviously complicated, but in theory, office towers are built to accommodate already percolating economic activity that will move into them. Developers don't expect the construction of new towers in and of themselves to generate that much new activity. And developers don't think of a city's office space as a total system; they don't care if an older building becomes abandoned and has to be creatively reused because their developments sucked the life out of it. Parks are a different story.
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You're right, developers probably don't care, thats the job for local officials. Theoretically boards and commissions of local approval pay attention to the supply/demand of landuse in an urban area and zone/rezone or approve/deny to avoid gluts and shortages. I think. I answer to both groups, and work at their mercy, so I've no idea the realities of this. But this is beside the point i guess, we know the reality is more complex, that the towers generate and replace simultaneously.

But I do think you sell parks short as instigators. To put it simply, which is all I have time for, take a poll of people who work and/or live in Boston and ask how many use public parks on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis. Take each number and subtract it from 100, and that is where the new users come. Sure there are plenty of parks, but may not suit me at a given time based on distance, programming, adjacencies, light orientation, exposure to wind, surface type, amount of seating, etc. Other times they will. It's like putting a new shop in a mall-- it's all just shopping, but the success of store 100 is not necessarily at the expense of the other 99.
 
But who is motivated to get out and go to this park, specifically, when they wouldn't have gone to another? Office workers who will want to lunch on it, maybe - but these same people would have just used PO Square and the waterfront, if not also the Common, before. Nearby residents? Only in the North End and Chinatown, if they don't also prefer those other options as well. The point here is that I don't think the Greenway is going to draw any proximity users that the "legacy" parks in the area didn't already get out of their offices or homes before.

The only conclusion I can draw is that the Greenway is and will be populated by gimmicks - the fountains, the hammock, the food trucks, the "programming" - investment which could have been cycled into any other park, and still drawn the people who travel specifically to use the amenities on the Greenway. We just wind up spreading ourselves too thin in one form or another. The balance between public and private space - and public and private funding - is out of whack.
 
People who live in $1,000-$1,500 a square foot condos don't populate the parks that might be right outside their door, except to walk their dog(s), who pee on the grass and leave polka dots of burnt out lawn when they do.
 
czsz said:
But who is motivated to get out and go to this park, specifically, when they wouldn't have gone to another? Office workers who will want to lunch on it, maybe -
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To answer your question: I am and do. My office is in the Bulfinch Triangle, and pre-Greenway days, I would eat lunch at my desk. Now, I frequently will go out to the north end parks for lunch and many times will walk the entire length of the Greenway, taking the T back...much better than sitting at my desk, and my waist line is better for it. As for PO Square - it's a beauty; there's no denying - but way too many yuppies at lunch time.

I disagree about the fountains - watching people/kids enjoy them is a refreshing break from the 9 to 5 dirge.

The hammock, however, is 100% pure fromage.
 
Pierce said:
And maybe it was freak, but everyone on here makes it sound like a ghost town. It was very well populated, and this even at 11am, before lunchers head out into it. Cycling the length of it was a nightmare, I had to decide block by block whether I was better off trying not to upset pedestrians walking and looking in different directions, or SUV drivers barreling through at 45 mph trying to catch lights, a lose-lose.
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A few of us have been posting similar statements, based upon actually experiencing the Greenway. It does indeed seem to be in an awakening.

http://www.archboston.org/community/showpost.php?p=107887&postcount=3804
I know that a certain percentage of this board will always be pissed that this wasn't a necklace of "1000 footers" or whatever the going rate for a "world class city", and they are predetermined to hate any urban greenspace that asserts itself as anything more than parsley around some piggish building, but for the first time since it was built I left the Greenway genuinely excited for its future. With time, thoughtful tinkering and investment maybe this can be improved upon it. Does it need infill building? Bike lanes? Transit? Yes, of course, all of those. But what is the point of 382 pages of bickering and pessimism? These parks are definitely more than these boards suggest, and I think creative minds should be identifying opportunities for improvement--there are plenty of reactionaries out there to just piss pessimism down the leg of this thing.
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Agree completely. A few tweaks here and there, especially bike lanes, and it will start to come together in a much richer form.
 
The only conclusion I can draw is that the Greenway is and will be populated by gimmicks - the fountains, the hammock, the food trucks, the "programming"
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But is that a bad thing? Many people come to the Esplanade to attend Hatch Shell events, or to the Common for Shakespeare, or to Christopher Columbus Park for its occasional summer concerts, or to the steps of the ICA for their outdoor shows. All of these things bring people together and encourage enjoyment of the park system.
 
Well, that settles it. The Greenway is an unqualified success among Bostonians.

I guess those of us who like our cities to be cities will have to stick to the old neighborhoods or look elsewhere.

Clearly, we'll never see a new truly urban space built in this city again for a looong time.
 
Where did I say it was an unqualified success? It's going to need tinkering for years if not decades (as did Copley Square).
 
^^ Not you Ron. I was referring to the last few posts in general... with a bit of hyperbole
 
statler said:
Well, that settles it. The Greenway is an unqualified success among Bostonians.

I guess those of us who like our cities to be cities will have to stick to the old neighborhoods or look elsewhere.

Clearly, we'll never see a new truly urban space built in this city again for a looong time.
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i'm not calling it a success, i'm just not calling it a hopeless tragedy and the worst decision to befall an urban area since Moses died (you can pick which Moses you want to use).

And how does a park conflict with "cities being cities"? Near as I can tell great cities, even the most dense, "urban" cities rely on parks in mass. Parkland as percentage of city area:
SF - 18.4%
NYC - 15.0%
Vancouver - 11.67%
Barcelona - 10.57%

Boston - 7.56%

I don't have solid numbers for paris, but the Bois de Bolougne alone accounts for 8.38% of its land area.

Most of these cities are building new parkland like mad, especially NYC, which between Governors Island and Brooklyn Bridge Park is investing hundreds of millions of dollars on 250+ acres of new waterfront park, which if developed privately would be among the most expensive available property in the world.

Barcelona adds 25 acres of parks a year.

So it's not the mere fact that its parks and not buildings that accounts for its lackluster performance, it the design and planning of them. I believe rather they picked safe, affordable designers who gave us rubber stamp open spaces that don't respond at all to the challenges/potentials of their urban situation. A park needs to embed itself but it also needs to catalyze, to instigate, and the folks at the Greenway Conservancy are just now figuring that out, a decade late.
 
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Czsz, Statler, you both sound like sour grapes hoping that the Greenway is a complete failure. I don't know if that's the tone you intend to strike, but it seems as if you're consumed by some sort of orthodoxy that proclaims the Greenway can and will never work, and even if it ends up well-used then those who enjoy it are ill-informed and stupid. The bad news for you is that it is not a complete failure, and nor will it be. I think there are only a few things that can be said about the corridor overall:

1) The city is unambiguously better off without the elevated artery (+)
2) Further development around the Greenway will increase its use (+)
3) The adjacent roads carry too much traffic and prioritize automobiles (-)
4) The governance system is opaque and the resulting "sacred cow" mentality is grating (-)

Overall, I'd call that a wash. But beyond that, I don't think it's worthwhile making monolithic observations. I think it's more fair to assess parcels individually.

I would rate them as follows:

Successes:
North End parks
Long Wharf area parks (carousel and fountain)

Adequate but need improvement:
Dewey Square
Chinatown

Inadequate:
Rowes Wharf to Dewey Square

Blights:
Ramp parcels

I see no reason to not celebrate what is clearly working. And in terms of the zero-sum use argument, remember that in the next decade there will be a good deal of development along the Greenway: Harbor garage in one form or another, Blackstone block, Government center garage, Bullfinch parcels, maybe even one day ramp parcel structures, dare I even mention a one-day SST - to name the big ones. And if you look at the BRA documents, there will be quite a number of smaller ones also that will no doubt actually face and interact with the park (unlike the pre-Greenway developments that understandably had their back to the artery).

I'd conclude that it's a work in progress with an uneven record of success and failure, and that it can be pushed much more towards the former with the help of activists like us who care to see it work.
 
Also, everyone including the Conservancy regards the Rowes Wharf to Dewey Square section's current condition as temporary. It was never supposed to belong to the Conservancy to begin with -- it was supposed to be the site of MassHort's Garden Under Glass. Nobody has really decided what to try next there, which is why it has no lighting and no paved paths.
 
I've long argued the both the North End and Chinatown parks are great and should be celebrated. In fact I like the Chinatown park more then most.

I've also never argued that parks are inherently anti-urban. Just this park (or most of it) is. Mostly because of where it is situated.

I just want what is best for this city. I really do. "Better than the artery" just isn't good enough for me. I want a return to what there before the artery. I know it is too much to ask, but I'm not going to stop asking. It's on my list with a return of the West End, Scollay Sq and a pet unicorn.

As far as the programming, I'm all in favor of it. I like the Hammock idea (I defended it upthread). But don't confuse making the best of a bad situation with making a bad situation good.

I still contend that the Greenway idea is fundamentally flawed urbanisticly and nothing short of a complete overhaul will fix it.
 
Facts:

1. The Boston Redevelopment Authority knew about the development of the Greenway for over a decade before it was built.

2. The Boston Redevelopment knew for over a decade that land values surrounding the Greenway would escalate -- to a large degree as a result of a multi-billlion $$$ taxpayer investment flowing from Federal dollars -- not from City's own improvements or the existing market.

3. During the same period, the Boston Redevelopment Authority approved tens of millions of square feet of new construction on properties that were enhanced by that same multi-billion $$$ Federal investment, and was responsible for ensuring a world-class outcome, worthy of that substantial public investment.

4. Over the entire decade, the Boston Redevelopment Authority did NOTHING to ensure that the Greenway would be abutted by significant developments with a REQUIREMENT that each large project include a significant residential component so that upon completion of the Greenway and in years to follow, Boston would be graced a fledgling new neighborhood.

5. So here we are today, "tinkering" at the edges and discussing "gimmicks" to attract park users.

EPIC FAIL.
 
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