Rose Kennedy Greenway

Bloomberg? If he can't run for a third term maybe he will take a shot at Menino's job.
 
Officially, the plantings and walkway on the Mass. Hort parcels are temporary -- which is probably why the walkways are not paved and no lighting is installed.
 
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I walked through the above photos yesterday - very beautiful and stunning on a sunny day compared to about 3 months ago. Nice job, Mass. Horticultural Society.
 
i like how the tunnel in the 2nd pic takes 98% of ALL traffic away.
 
Fair assumption? They kept all the cars on the road from the 1st pic that weren't on 93. What they didn't do in the second pic is add a significant number of people using the greenway. hmm.
 
People in the second photo are obscured by vegetation that will take at least a decade to reach the state shown there. Also, the parcel across from the Rowes Wharf arch looks nothing like that, because it is narrowed by on- and off-ramps.
 
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it doesn't look like that, because whoever made the image just superimposed post office square onto the RKG...look closely.
 
sidewalks said:
it doesn't look like that, because whoever made the image just superimposed post office square onto the RKG...look closely.
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Nice catch! They did tweek it a bit though. The vent is the dead giveaway.
 
I think I've been here...although it's hard to tell, since it looks like any Sun Belt edge city. Wait, I've got it, Tyson's Corner, VA, right?

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Not every scene in the city has to be stereotypical of the city, in fact, the density there is much higher than any "edge city." (especially with a 600 ft tower at the right!) Of course, there's still a lot of room for improvement, but the Greenway is already a moderately good success.
 
That would have been hard in this particular location. The on- and off-ramps are within the bounds of the Greenway because the Big Dig project had an absolute requirement that they not demolish any downtown buildings.
 
Good moves on Greenway

By Yvonne Abraham
Globe Columnist / October 19, 2008

If you want to see how great the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway can and should be, head down to Chinatown any day of the week.

There, at the edge of the new park just outside the Chinatown Gate, you will find a bunch of guys sitting at dinky tables playing Chinese chess.

This is usually a two-man game, but it takes at least eight to play it in Chinatown: two to move the pieces around, and six to sit around barking advice at them in Cantonese.

At one table on a recent morning, a gray-haired man faced a Boston cop. They stared at the board, slowly sliding around the white disks labeled with red and green characters. Other men chain-smoked Shuangxi cigarettes, jiggled their legs, and watched.

"Why are you afraid of the cannon?" one spectator demanded of the older man. "One move, you can kill the general."

"Kill that one, you should kill that one," offered another.

The elderly man ignored them. He moved his piece. The cop cornered him.

"We told you so!" the men said, according to an interpreter.

This gang of enthusiasts - mostly retired men and restaurant workers between shifts - started out in the Maxim bakery on Harrison Avenue a few years ago. But the groups that gathered to watch the games got so big they had to move onto the street outside the Sovereign Bank. And then they decamped to the Chinatown Gate Park, at the end of Beach Street.

About a year ago, the games moved to a nook at the very tip of the new Greenway - 27 acres of public space where the elevated expressway used to be.

The groups are cramped in their little corner. One of the tables sits in the dirt under a tree. A few feet away is a handsome paved plaza with sculptures and a fountain and bamboo garden. They could spread out there, but there's no shade. And they don't want to get in other people's way.

A more comfortable set-up would be useful, though.

"No question, it would be much better if we had a permanent place to play," said one of the spectators on Thursday morning. A custodian at a downtown courthouse, he didn't want his name used, lest his wife find out he'd been watching chess all morning.

Here, at the very end of the Greenway, is the promise of the Big Dig fulfilled. The point of that enormously expensive feat was to knit the city together, and to turn the freed-up space into places where neighborhoods could expand and the whole city could visit.

So far, the Greenway mostly has fallen short of those ideals. It needs cafes and museums, though in this economic climate, it's not likely that the various cultural centers proposed will be built anytime soon. It needs more - and edgier - public art. The Interstate 93 ramp insisted upon by the downtown community, and the busy cross-streets that carve the Greenway up make it feel like a fancy traffic island in places.

But the trees will grow. It could take years, but the city's newest public space will fill out. The Greenway will get there.

There is plenty that is great about it already: locals lolling about in the beautiful North End parks; the sopping kids squealing in the flirty, on-and-off fountain between Milk and State streets in summer; the sky and the sunshine where there was none.

And the Chinatown chess men. They achieved something no amount of money or painstaking planning ever could: they have given the place a personality.

Nancy Brennan, executive director of the Greenway Conservancy, knows the immense value of that. She wants to provide better furniture and shade for the chess players so they can move out into the plaza if they want.

For now, the players stack their little tables against a fence every night, and every morning they're still there. And it looks like the men and their mismatched chairs have been here forever.

Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. Her e-mail address is Abraham@globe.com

Link
 
I think that area of Chinatown really have the best opportunity for a cafe. Along the West wall of Imperial Seafood is a wall of closed restaurants. If they can turn these into outdoor cafe, then this park is 100% a success.
 
So far, the Greenway mostly has fallen short of those ideals. It needs cafes and museums, though in this economic climate, it's not likely that the various cultural centers proposed will be built anytime soon. It needs more - and edgier - public art. The Interstate 93 ramp insisted upon by the downtown community, and the busy cross-streets that carve the Greenway up make it feel like a fancy traffic island in places.

But the trees will grow. It could take years, but the city's newest public space will fill out. The Greenway will get there.
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These are directly contradictory paragraphs. You can't assert the need for active steps - art installations, museums, cafes - and also discuss structural shortcomings - the ramps and heavy traffic - on the one hand, and then blithely and passively declare that the trees filling out will make everything okay, on the other.

I don't understand the need to defend the Greenway's obvious shortcomings even when one knows that there are serious problems lurking under its trees' still-tiny shadows.
 
Any friends I bring to the greenway from out of town or from Cambridge who never dare cross the river [GASP] think that it is nothing more than a median strip. I know it's getting RAVE REVIEWS but seriously....I will say it over and over and over and over again, what a waste.

'this is a park?'
'when are we going to see this greenway?'
'where are we?'
'i'm trapped'
ETC ETC ETC

A make-shift cafe might aesthetically or artificially spruce it up but the fundamental errors of this are still very clear and will continue to be for years.
 
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