Rose Kennedy Greenway

Menino: "Who's going to do the work that's necessary to maintain the beauty?"

Beauty? Where? :?:
 
...and a granite seawall that once marked the city's shoreline and was excavated during the building of the I-93 tunnels.
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That's actually pretty cool that they are able to incorporate that. IMO this is the kind of thing that will help makes sections of the RKG unique and not just another park that can be found in any city. Does anyone have pics of this? And does anyone know if there are more Boston-specific heirlooms or actual historic items being incorporated?
 
ablarc said:
stellarfun said:
"The long-range issue is the maintenance -- who will maintain the Greenway?" Menino asked. "Who's going to do the work that's necessary to maintain the beauty? That's a question that has yet to be resolved."
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Are they competing to do it or vying to avoid it?
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My recollection is that the City of Boston passed on the chance to control the Greenway space when His Honor the mayor said, several years back, that the city didn't and wouldn't have the money to maintain the space.

Boston, the city, doesn't spend much per capita on its parks and recreation areas.

I'm not sure of the date of these, but here are some statistics:
? The Boston Parks Department budget is less than 1% of the city?s budget.

? Boston spends $48 per person each year on parks, compared to Chicago ($108) and Detroit ($63).

? One study placed Massachusetts 49th in state and local spending on parks and recreation per person.

? 70% of the Emerald Necklace maintenance fund goes to the Boston Common and Public Garden; the rest must be shared by Franklin Park, Jamaica Pond, Olmsted Park and the Back Bay Fens.

? Boston(at 9%) has the second lowest participation rate in physical education in the country in comparison to other major cities and states. The average for the US is 28.4%.

? Boston has only 3 professionals allocated to tree care; Phoenix, Arizona employs 40 foresters, horticulturalists, and landscape architects to maintain parks.
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Source:
http://fpc.squarespace.com/storage/Facts Figures.doc.

So the short of it is, Boston ain't willing to pay to construct and maintain a world-class Greenway. And I doubt the former landscape architect, now gadfly activist, is leading any crusade to better Boston's greenspaces.
 
In Brooklyn there is a new park going at the same scale as this along the waterfront. The idea behind long-term financing is to rehabilitate a large warehouse into condos, along with building two other condo towers. Income from taxes from these private buildings will be going to fund the public park. This has many people unhappy and nervous but it seems to be the only way if the government ain't gonna cough up the money.
 
It's not easy being a Greenway
July 26, 2007

RE "HOME stretch" (City & Region, July 22), about Greenway work entering its final phase: The predominant colors I saw were white, gray, black, and red. So little green.

I've lived in Boston since 1970. I've lived through all of this. When you say "greenway," I think of the broad swath of lush green grass and trees on Commonwealth Avenue from Arlington Street to Mass. Ave. Or the Esplanade from Leverett Circle to Western Avenue. These are places where the people decide the uses. The various funky placements of walks, pathways, pergolas, and fountains on the Kennedy Greenway are forced-use designs. It seems every actual green spot is framed in concrete or brick. Some are large areas of grass, geometrically interrupted by a cross-hatch of cement containment walls.

I haven't been down there yet, but I plan to go soon. I want to see if this long-touted so-called Greenway is real, or just a Disney-fication of the urban park. Meanwhile, I sense Frederick Law Olmsted spinning in his grave.

PAUL D. BERG
Newton


ALTHOUGH I heartily endorse the application of Rose Kennedy's name to the surface of the Big Dig ("Birth of the Greenway," Op-ed, July 20), I am bothered that the term "greenway" was applied to separate paver-stoned pocket parks for pedestrians.

In the 1987 "Report of the President's Commission on Americans Outdoors," the authors recommended that "communities establish greenways, corridors of private and public recreation lands and waters, to provide people with access to open spaces close to where they live, and to link the rural and urban spaces in the American landscape." The Minuteman trail is a greenway. The name Rose Kennedy Greenway, rather than Rose Kennedy Boulevard or Parkway, may mislead people into expecting connected parks for pedestrian and bicycle passage north and south, especially as a link between the South Bay Harbor Trail and the bicycle paths under the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge, both considered greenways. Instead, bicyclists must travel with the cars in three lanes of traffic beside the pedestrian pocket parks.

One solution to get closer to the true definition of a greenway may be to provide European cycle tracks on the outer edges of the streets for passage by bicyclists and to better connect the other greenways.

ANNE LUSK
Brookline
The writer, a research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, is studying 20 greenways across the country through a grant from the National Institutes of Health.
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Memo to Paul Berg

Memo to Paul Berg: you're an idiot.

"I haven't been there yet."
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Okay, huh? How can you form an opinion, then?

When you say "greenway," I think of the broad swath of lush green grass and trees on Commonwealth Avenue from Arlington Street to Mass. Ave. Or the Esplanade from Leverett Circle to Western Avenue. These are places where the people decide the uses.
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Riggght. Because the Back Bay and Esplanade were built haphazardly, without a plan at all.

WHAT THE F????
 
Re: Memo to Paul Berg

JimboJones said:
"I haven't been there yet."
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Okay, huh? How can you form an opinion, then?
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He was referring to this image which took up about a half a page in the paper:
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I don't agree with him that there should be more green space, but I thought he made it pretty clear he was talking about what he saw in the picture.

RE "HOME stretch" (City & Region, July 22), about Greenway work entering its final phase: The predominant colors I saw were white, gray, black, and red. So little green.
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*Nor do I think he should judge by what he saw in a picture, but he is technically correct in saying that it looks like there is more pavement than green space in that photo. Why that is a bad thing, I have no idea. :?:
 
Still, you might think he could take a half hour or so to visit from Newton rather than write a scathing letter on the basis of a high-altitude aerial photo. He might have seen, I don't know, grass being planted rather than an abstact cluster of dirt...he might have understood spatial relations better while on the ground experiencing them as those who walk through the Greenway will. I don't even necessarily disagree with his conclusions, but to make them on this basis was plainly ignorant.
 
Well viewing the pic ^ and actually having walked the RKG recently, I can only assume he's referring to the white/gray of the cement, sidewalks and wall structures, black of pavement and red of all the brick-work. However, his contention that there isn't enough open or green space seems pretty ridiculous. If anything, there are areas where it is too open, too much green space where there should have been buildings to connect the surrounding environments. Poorly planned (IMO) green space I might agree with. But not enough of it?

The fact that he's never been there bothers me though. Seen from a birds eye view as in the photo it is a total cluster*bleep*. From the air there seems to be little rhyme or reason for the meandering paths, placement of parks and lack of integrated buildings. One small park often seems to have little to do with the others or with its surroundings. Seen from the street level I think the greenway is actually much more pleasant with a more human scale. Perhaps in time as the city and the greenway adjust to each other these problems/perceptions of its relationship to the surrounding city will change.
 
Also, the foreground of that photo is the three Mass Hort parcels, which are very much still in limbo. Any landscaping there right now is going to be temporary.
 
Some of the other aerials that accompanied the above article:

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Seventeen years after officials said the Big Dig would help lead to shady boulevards, babbling fountains, and quiet lawns, they are finally making good on their promise to build the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway.

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The idea for the Greenway dates to the 1970s, when officials envisioned a thriving ribbon of green like Las Ramblas in Barcelona that would reconnect downtown with the waterfront. But as the decades passed, the vision fell prey to political squabbling over who would fund, design, and control the parks: the city, the state or the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.

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A view of the North End Park, which will feature vine-covered pergolas, a bubbling fountain, and cafe tables and chairs and is expected to open soon after Labor Day.

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At left, a parcel next to Boston Garden, with Interstate 93 in the background.

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The Wharf District park area will feature a central fountain that shoots columns of water, a dozen illuminated sculptures called light blades, and a granite seawall that once marked the city's shoreline and was excavated during the building of the I-93 tunnels.

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The central fountain at Wharf District park, designed to shoot columns of water, is under construction.

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The base of what's going to be be vine-covered pergolas in the North End park.

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By 2014, a YMCA will rise in this proposed site near the North End, officials say.

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?Every day as you go by the Greenway you see improvements ? new bushes being planted, brickwork being done,? Mayor Thomas M. Menino said. ?And if you come back and don?t see it for a week, you see the real progress being made in the planting and landscaping of the Greenway.?

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At left, a closer view of the Wharf District parks. ?The long-range issue is the maintenance ? who will maintain the Greenway?? Menino asked.
 
I must admit, the Greenway looks pretty good. Unless the grass dies and pedestrian litter the park like they do in the Common. I hope they distibute enough of the solar powered trash cans there.
 
?The long-range issue is the maintenance ? who will maintain the Greenway?? Menino asked.
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This will determine most of the success/failure of the Greenway.

Of course, if they build small shops and restaurants scattered among the parcels the rents would help offset the cost.
 
I have to chime in here. I had a lite dinner last night at the outdoor cafe at the Rowes Wharf Hotel, and then took a walk to the North End via the Greenway. I have to say in all honesty, and as a prior critic, that the Greenway is coming along better than I had dared to hope. Seen from ground level and with the use of a little imagination in projecting the growth of trees, bushes, etc., I think it will become a very special place. One must fully realize that this whole endeavor is still very much a work in progress, and by no means complete. I think in 5 year's time, when hopefully more buildings and cafes "front" the parks, and hopefully the planned museum buildings and visitor information center is built, then I think it can be fairly judged, but not now. It is just too soon and very unfair to do so. Let us not forget that Commonwealth Avenue received scathing editorials and was labeled a dustbowl when it was first laid down.
 
Well ...

I think the end result will probably be better than we feared, but not as good as we hoped.

Eh, what can you do.

It certainly has lots of concrete and roadway.

OMG, suddenly I was reminded of the Mall in DC. I don't know why. I think it's because the Greenway is so wide in places.

The fear when this was done was that instead of the Artery being a barrier between neighborhoods, the greenery would end up doing the same thing. The buildings, etc., was a way around this, right? To stitch together the neighborhoods.

Don't know if that will end up happening. Downtown still seems far away from the waterfront, and vice versa.

I'm happy with it.
 
Libeskind's oeuvre is nothing short of architecture for the criminally insane.

If Brutalism is bad, what's this?
 
I want a modern structure, and I like the concept as stated, but I don't like anything at all about this rendering. It looks too much like something out of a Jetsons cartoon. I sure hope the architect makes some design changes before it's too late!
 
That design is pointless. Seriously, does its awkwardness serve any purpose? Was Libeskind thinking "hmm, what if I imagine the 93 is still above ground--a little section they forgot to tear down--but then they discovered it was covered in lead paint, to they had to wrap it up in shrouds to sandblast it, but then they ran out of money and left it wrapped, like a beautiful but angry and sad Christo!" Anyway, that's what I think when I look at his design.
 
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