Rose Kennedy Greenway

The irony is that the highway felt more urban.
 
nice pics -- thanks. there ought to be a petition for ablarc's trolley line.
 
A bankrupt channel of suburban mindlessness based on an achingly mistaken premise: that this area needs a river of green.




As though that weren't enough, the actual "design" displays exactly zero genuine inspiration. "What shall we do next, Harry? I know, let's ..."

Decision-making in a contextual vacuum. Why, they don't even recognize the existence of Rowe's Wharf's massive arch.
 
It looks like theyre going for a "Savannah" atmosphere with the last two.

I like the entire thing, although I wonder how itll look in February. Needs more pine trees I think.
 
jass said:
I like the entire thing, although I wonder how it'll look in February.
Click to expand...

Since it's a public place in Boston, my money's on "filthy" and "joyless"...
 
the greenway is so depressing. unless a ton of people end up wanting to be at those parks during the summer and it has some sort of life, i think its safe to declare them a failure. :cry:
 
I can't believe how good of a space this would have made for light rail. :x
 
I wonder how many of you who have already concluded that the Greenway is an abject failure have actually walked along its length recently? I do it frequently and while I am sure that certain elements will be more successful than others, I think it will be a great success. It is tremendously exciting to see the transformation of the City from the days of the hulking Central artery - now that was a truly depressing site.

And as the additional elements are completed, albeit many years from now (the Harbor Park Pavilion, the Boston Museum Project, the New Center for Art and Culture), it will only get better. The area will become more and more alive.

The Greenway also has promise to enliven the downtown in other ways. Already additional hosing has sprouted along the Greenway with numerous additional residential proposals being tested. The potential for the Broad Street area to become predominantly housing with restaurant and retail on the first floor spilling out onto the street is real with the amenities provided by the Greenway and other improvements to the area. The Greenway has created the opportunity to make this part of the City a 24 hour neighborhood over time.

I for one think the mix along the Greenway is appropriate. The fissure created by the Central Artery was a travesty for the City, but the opportunity afforded to the City by its removal was immeasurable. It provided a unique opportunity for the City to do something different. I love architecture , but to simply reconnect the City by filling the space with new buildings would have been a mistake.

The Greenway will be far from perfect. I am sure that changes will be made over time. But I for one am extremely excited about this wonderful project.
 
Maybe

I didn't have feelings one way or another, I just assumed I'd be disappointed, but I have to say, the most recent photos make me have hope. I think it looks pretty damn good right now.

Pieces of it are too flat and boring, but the landscaping work in other areas is encouraging.

I, for one, am willing to withhold judgment until it's all done. No matter what, I don't think I'll consider it a "failure" by any means.
 
dirtywater has a point. Some parcels of the Greenway are better than others, but on a whole I actually think that Greenway is pretty good (from what I have seen recently). I also agree with the thought that we should wait and see the Greenway when the museums and pavilion are completed (if they ever are) before final judgment. The problem that I have is this: All of these small parks that make up the Greenway are pretty good. Individually, if they were dispersed throughout the city, they would probably look good. However, for an area that was hyped up to be the gem of Boston, the Greenway lacks a bit there. As I said before, they are certainly nice parks, but they are just that...nice. In my opinion, they are not the gem of Boston. I just think that for all the hype surrounding the whole thing, the parks should have been a little bit better.

It will be interesting to see in a few years when the foliage has grown in some more.
 
Dirtywater wrote: "Already additional hosing has sprouted along the Greenway "

Isn't public lewdness an illegal activity?

(sorry, couldn't resist that one) :?
 
bosman said:
on a whole I actually think that Greenway is pretty good ...
Click to expand...
Well, it's definitely better than what was there before ...
 
I'll repeat: the irony is that the highway was more urban.

The area beneath it could have been improved. Shops, laneways, lights. Much as in sub-expressway zones in Japan. It would have helped reinforce the cramped, chaotic, dense sensation that makes downtown Boston so wonderful...and cost about $15 billion less.

Instead we have a city blown wide open. No amount of landscaping is going to compensate for a scar so wide. Such an esplanade is not even a bad idea in and of itself. But here, in the heart of a choked tangle of colonial streets, it strikes one as Hausmannianism gone mad.
 
I agree.

The twist of the knife for me are the earthen mounds with trees near South Station. It all looks so seventies, so much like the Charles River Park apartment complex: the suburb in the city. This is a bloody shame. The overgrown wide open scar, with the mounds, the grass, the trees, looks like some sci-fi flick of a deserted, decaying city taken over by encroaching forest.

I agree the elevated roadway should have been left in place, and the Central Artery tunnel never built. A few short tunnels to carry the Callahan and Sumner tunnel approaches would have enabled Cross Street and Hanover Street to be tied through. A surface light rail line could have been run underneath the elevated highway. Buildings could have been built under and over the old elevated highway, the green cladding of the old Artery could have been replaced with something better, and an urban fabric of buildings, surface streets and light rail could have enveloped the elevated roadway so that it wouldn't be that noticeable.

The only part of the old elevated I would have replaced is the Charles River bridge. The Zakim Bridge could have fit into the old highway just south of Causeway Street. Also, the tunneling under City Square was worthwhile, as was the Ted Williams harbor tunnel.

But as for the rest, I would have left the elevated highway in place. Then there would have been plenty of funding remaining for a tunneled north-south rail connector underneath the old Central Artery.
 
The elevated artery needed replacement one way or the other, and replacing it with another el would have been at least as difficult from the point of view of engineering, and infinitely harder to sell politically.

I share your preference for urban grit; but the old artery's grit never struck me as particularly urban. For all the talk of reconnecting the city, with the exception of the North End there never was much of the city on the other side of the highway to reconnect with, The fixation with access to the water, which is much more pleasant now, is just as suburban as the insistence on the parks. And paradoxically, the authentic North End will likely fall victim to the new connection.

Politically and practically,the tunnel was necessary; it should have been replaced with buildings interespersed with parks, not the other way around.

justin
 
The old artery was so dirty and ugly I can't imaging why anyone would want that back.

There are other ideas that may have been better. I like the TED williams but the rest could have been a grand surface Blvd with no tunnel and a NS subway underground.

They could have upgraded route 1 and called it I-195 north of the city. Had it go through Logan and join I90 there . It could have gone on south through a second tunnel to join up with 93 south of DT. Then there would have been both a highway and a grand blvd. Major interstates stop in many large cities like NY and SF, it works.

The Greenway will get more urban and interesting but it will take 5 to 20 years. What they are putting in now is at least in part temporary as I understand it.

Boston is very compact and has few (no) Grand Blvds. The fact that this area is opened up helps other parts of the city grow and might lead to a larger and potentially more interesting and diverse cityscape with a beautiful space in the middle.
 
Given that the CAT was tunneled into harbor muck, the only urban grid one could built above the CAT would be sized like the old West End. Course, if you wanted to spend billions more strengthening tunnel ceilings and sectioning off parts of the CAT for future foundation footings for high-rises and mid-rises, you could build higher.

As for urban grit, I don't notice much lamenting the tearing down of the Washington St. elevated, or the Green Line by North Station, or that the 50+ acres of park built along the Southwest Expressway right of way should have instead become blocks of housing and neighborhood retail.
 
I agree that the removal of the elevated Green/Orange lines at North Station and removal of the Charlestown el line is pretty much universally applauded as a wise move.

However, I've seen quite a few messages on this board and others stating that the Washington Street El should have been left in place. I agree with that as well. It was located on a street suitably wide for an elevated rail structure, and it served densely populated areas that require a grade separated rapid transit line. Unfortunately the SW corridor Orange line which replaced it is very poorly located. My opinion is that the Washington Street el could have been refurbished, possibly even replaced with a more slender and modern structure similar to the ones on the Skytrain rail system in Vancouver, BC., and it would have enhanced the neighborhoods it would have served.

As for the old Central Artery, I agree it was a hideously ugly structure, as well as having too many poorly located ramps. It may have been possible to remove it and just build a landscaped surface boulevard (without a tunnel) between the Mass Pike interchange and the Sumner/Callahan tunnel entrance, if a wider Ted Williams tunnel and a freeway connection from it to an improved Route 1 had been built. This would have provided a north-south expressway through the metro area without the need for the tunneled expressway through downtown Boston.

In any case, the wide open scar along the Artery corridor that we now have in downtown Boston is a mistake. It desperately needs to be at least partially built up with low rise buildings, and perhaps even a light rail line. What's a bit upsetting to me is that after huge areas of dense historic neighborhoods in central Boston were leveled in the 50's and 60's for a "towers in the park" type of so-called urban renewal, we are now repeating exactly the same ghastly mistake with the Rose Kennedy Greenway. Instead of using this opportunity to help undo some of the widespread devastation from 1950's and '60's urban renewal and highways, instead we are creating something that has the emptiness and soullessness of Charles River Park (which wiped out the West End) and Government Center.

Instead off re-knitting and healing the scar created by the old Central Artery by building a lively, diverse, and walkable neighborhood reuniting the cleaved halves of the city, we're building an empty, wind-blown no-mans land, which will get some limited use in the summer, but I expect very little use in the winter.
 
Hasnt Boston been losing residents? Dont americans love suburbs? This forum is in the minority, perhaps a suburban park is exactly what Boston needed to make it more attractive
 
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