Rose Kennedy Greenway

[vanshnookenraggen]

I moved all that stuff about the Reichstag here because it really had nothing to do with this thread.

 

[kz1000ps]

Some photos of the Chinatown parcels, 6/22:

this one was from the 28th

and one of the Fidelity park:

 

[TheBostonBoy]

Pictures of the greenway near the North End

don't mind the people in the way lol

 

[palindrome]

It is progressing nicely. I can't wait to see it when (if) it's full of people.

 

[TheBostonBoy]

Ya it is, and I am sure their will be a lot of people there when it is finished. There was a large presence of people there while I was there and it isn't even finished! lol

 

[lexicon506]

I noticed that too...if there are that many people when the place is sun baked and surrounded by chain link fences, imagine how many people will be out when construction is done and the trees are grown! These pictures make me optimistic that even if the parks themselves aren't anything special, people will still make them into the successful urban space that they're supposed to be.

 

[ablarc]

Most of those pedestrians are there because they have to be. I feel sorry that they have to cross this zone of tedium. And ever day, at that.

Much of it feels like a landscaped highway interchange. They have those in Charlotte.

 

[palindrome]

I know look at the suffering in this kids eyes!

the pain!! the horror!! WOULD SOMEONE THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN!!



Charlotte is having a construction boom right now. Wish I could say the same about Boston.

 

[atlantaden]

I've walked around the North End Parks twice now and am most disappointed with the plantings, specifically the shrubbery. Row upon endless boring row of boxwoods, juniper groundcover, and danicas. One huge thing that makes the Park at Post Office Square, Eastport Park and South Boston Marine Park so damn awesome is the variety of plantings imaginatively arranged to be both attractive and eye catching. It really doesn't take a lot of thought to choose plants that have interesting textures, coloring, shapes and are easy to maintain. It does take some imagination however, to arrange them and I would have thought that the landscape architects of Crosby, Schlessinger, Smallridge would have had at least some imagination when choosing and arranging the shrubs.

 

[Bobby Digital]

i think i walked by the parks about 5 times last night... but i can really be sure. :roll:

 

[Charlie_mta]

I think the Greenway in Chinatown, from Dewey Square south, is of a more suitable scale than the wide Greenway north from Dewey Square to the North End. By sheer luck the highway splits into two narrower corridors south of Dewey Sq. I think the Chinatown section will be a big success.

In contrast, the photos of the Greenway from Dewey Square to the North End show a vast yawing openness. That, coupled with the extremely ugly parking garages and old pre-Central Artery buildings with their ends ripped off, make this area look like a very wide freeway corridor blown through the heart of the city. No amount of landscaping, whether good or bad, can mitigate the non-human scale of this vast scar through Boston.

As someone said, the Greenway (except the Chinatown section) looks like a wide, landscaped freeway which would be suitable for Houston Texas, but not through the center of Boston.

 

[Bobby Digital]

^ i can see your point to an extent..... but i think people's views are skewed based on if they have actually been there recently and seen it with their own eyes or if you just make your judgments based off the pictures.

 

[Ron Newman]

It will look less like a 'yawning openness' once it is closed in by the Bulfinch Triangle developments, the YMCA, the Boston History Museum, the New Center for Arts and Culture, and (let's hope someday) greenhouses. It will also feel much less like a highway interchange once all the ramps are covered over this way.

 

[econ_tim]

Most of those pedestrians are there because they have to be. I feel sorry that they have to cross this zone of tedium. And ever day, at that.

Much of it feels like a landscaped highway interchange. They have those in Charlotte.

bring back the central artery!

 

[ablarc]

bring back the central artery!

That's the only alternative. ...Right?

 

[singbat]

^ i can see your point to an extent..... but i think people's views are skewed based on if they have actually been there recently and seen it with their own eyes or if you just make your judgments based off the pictures.

spent a fair amount of time in the aquarium to n. end side. it is a very unlikely landscape. way too open. hard to imagine that stretch turning into anything like the common or garden. no doubt it will be smaller, more integrated at the margins, and with something worth a person walking that way from GC rather than towards Park Street during lunch... in 25 to 50 years...

 

[czsz]

the YMCA, the Boston History Museum

...the proposed designs for which are so monstrously hideous I might prefer the ramps.

 

[statler]

THE OBSERVER
Greenway globalist
Cultural center's new leader to build bridges

By Sam Allis | July 1, 2007

There's a new player in town. Dan Neuman. Arrived here from LA in January, the Moon of the Brown Snow, to run the New Center for Arts and Culture, an outfit I'm guessing 90 percent of Boston has never heard of.

The name sounds like a CIA cover. It could mean anything. And "new" makes you wonder what the "old" was.

The project was first envisioned as a Jewish institution in Newton and downtown Boston, but ended up, with strong backing from power brokers like Norman Leventhal and Ed Sidman, with a broader mission on a key spot on the star-crossed Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway.

Neuman, 63, vows the center will not be a stealth Jewish institution camouflaged with lofty rhetoric about global cultures, as more than a few believe, but he accepts the skepticism.

"It's natural and understandable," he says. "The proof will be in the performances. They must be the highest quality. There is a Jewish aspect of this to its core. But this is going to be an institution dedicated to bringing people together through the arts of the world."

Developer Ron Druker, who is chairman of the project, puts it this way: "The Jews are not taking over the greenway."

Neuman is a globalist, like Joseph Aoun, the linguistics scholar from Lebanon who is president of Northeastern. I like that. Boston needs a lot more of these types if it is to gain a shred of credibility as the "world-class city" it claims to be.

Neuman is an interesting bird. Born in Switzerland. Grew up in Chicago. Married an Indian woman. Taught anthropology at Dartmouth. Ran the music school at the University of Washington. Did extensive research in India on musical traditions there. Ran the School of the Arts and Architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles , where he raised close to $100 million. And then he was executive chancellor and provost of the university, where he managed a $3.6 billion budget.

The India part is fascinating. He and his research team studied the tradition of hereditary musicians, where families produce generations of them. He then produced an atlas called "Bards, Ballads and Boundaries" that documents the familial musical tradition in 3,000 villages in three western districts of Rajasthan.

He'll mention the number of great 20th-century violinists , like Jascha Heifetz, who came from Odessa. He'll note the large Japanese community in Brazil.

"I came here to create a new kind of institution," he says. "Boston doesn't have anything like this. It's not going to be Euro centric. Think of Glenn Gould and Ravi Shankar."

The Jewish Diaspora , he posits, has given that community a sensibility that is relevant today, when other diasporas are reshaping America. So the center will examine the global diaspora informed by the Jewish Diaspora experience. We'll see how that plays out.

LA, he adds correctly, is far ahead of Boston in absorbing the diasporas of different ethnicities: "It is still in the future here." His goal is noble, but then you'd fill Fenway with the number of people who want to bring people together. So what's his angle?

What he calls fusion events, which sounds rather Hollywood. It's not: "We want to avoid an evening devoted to Greek culture, then another Japanese, and another Chinese."

Instead, think of an Indo-Brazilian evening, where both cultures bring their music together on the same stage. Brazilians, he notes, have been the fastest-growing immigrant community in Boston since 2000. Great, and the connection between Indians and Brazilians is what?

"There is none," he says. "I like the idea precisely because there is none."

Neuman sees world music, now ubiquitous thanks to the Internet, critical to his institution. He's betting it will be a big draw for Boston's young. I wonder whether they'll actually show up.

"They will," he maintains. "I've seen it." Neuman recalls a conference in Berlin he attended a decade ago. After the powwow ended, young people poured into a room with a record of a famous Pakistani musician playing Kavali music, and began dancing to it.

"It never occurred to me that people would listen to it, let alone dance to it," he says.

Neuman and others have cited as a template New York's 92d Street Y, the great clearinghouse for politics, literature, music, art, you name it. He reminds me that the Y is a Jewish institution -- begun as the Young Men's Hebrew Association.

Boston definitely needs its own 92d Street Y, but this isn't it. The Y offers a much broader menu, including big dollops of politics, domestic and global, to give it torque. The center here is strictly arts.

Dan Neuman brings a lot to Boston. His skills are broad and eclectic. He's a proven bridge builder and a great face for this institution, whatever its outcome.

That said, he has his work cut out for him until 2012, when the New Center is slated to open. Boston has always been a tough audience, and we're now particularly petulant about anything to do with the greenway, given its sorry history.

We're also aware that we'll find out what this thing really is only when it opens.

Sam Allis's e-mail address is allis@globe.com

Link

 

[ablarc]

^ Sounds semi-promising.

 

[BostonSkyGuy]

^ Sounds semi-promising.

I'm not holding my breath.

My favorite line is: "Boston has always been a tough audience, and we're now particularly petulant about anything to do with the greenway, given its sorry history."

The Greenway isn't even near complete and already it has a "sorry" history. Only in Boston...