Seaport Square (Formerly McCourt Seaport Parcels)

TheRifleman said:
The Seaport Identity: Community criteria is broken down like this:
Yuppies (Upper Rich Class)
upper management & Executives 100K+Year
Top of the tier International Students with a bankroll.

I believe this area will be in and out like most of the students going to school on Comm Ave near BU and BC.
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Posted this back in 2015
I still stand by this comment over the Globe article.
SEAPORT==MONEY---Bottom line
 
JeffDowntown said:
Boston Athletic Club at 653 Summer Street has 4 indoor tennis courts.
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I thought the discussion revolved around public amenities. It's likely you'd have to be a member and pay a small fortune in order to use these courts.
 
DZH22 said:
I thought the discussion revolved around public amenities. It's likely you'd have to be a member and pay a small fortune in order to use these courts.
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That gym also has basketball courts (and a soccer pitch) so the point is moot anyway.
 
Basketball courts in the "Seaport" would be 1960's game style. You ever try to shoot a 3 pointer in a strong wind? Same issue for tennis, skeet shooting, badminton, table tennis, baseball, hurling, hurling (puking)....

Anyway, it would be nice to be able to live there, with or without game.
 
FenwayResident said:
Uh... there's one right here. I don't see any tennis courts (or any other sort of sporting area) in the Seaport. So by your basketball metric, the Seaport is actually pro-black!
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A (barely) half court shared with hopscotch?

You've proven my point.

But really, Im just pointing out that if you're in the majority, it is very easy to see "normal" things (like a perfectly innocent tennis court) and not realize that behind the scenes, there's some form of racism involved.

Sometimes it's intentional. Sometimes it's accidental.

I was really calling out this hot garbage.

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[/url]IMG_3635 by David Couhig, on Flickr[/IMG]


I would put down large sums of money, bitcoin even, that if someone proposed a park in this district with a series of basketball courts, it will be NIMBYed to hell and back.

No one will say "this will attract black people and that's bad" because this is Boston, a liberal mecca, but the subtext will be there.

See also: rich, liberal, NYC

Some residents have become so troubled by the situation that they have asked Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation, the group that runs the park, to replace the basketball courts with something else. Tennis courts are a frequent suggestion.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/...k-courtside-fights-put-neighbors-on-edge.html
 
Wait so black people dont play tennis? I get what your saying but you just generalized that all black people play basketball. Venus and Serena are the most famous tennis players in the world. I get it thats really an anomaly and I get your point and agree with the overall sentiment especially the people in the renders but its hard not to generalize which you just did while trying not to. Overall though my take on the seaport is its a division of class. I dont know anyone that can afford to live there and myself being white, I understand that I cant afford waterfront property next to downtown Boston and Im fine with that nobody needs to make exceptions for me. It comes down to its expensive property, in a majority white state, and who makes up the majority of wealthy individuals. The factors that allowed the people who are rich to be so are more racist than the expensive waterfront property they are moving into.
 
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^If you're not interested in having an actual discussion, save your trolling and fuck off to reddit.

stick n move said:
Wait so black people dont play tennis?
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Tennis is predominantly played by wealthier, whiter people.

Basketball is predominantly played by lower income, darker people.

"But Serena Williams!" "My black coworker plays tennis!" "Oprah said she hates basketball!"

Nothing is binary, but we can speak about majorities, or a preponderance.
 
Time for the moderator to split this off to a "Racist and Fascist Recreational Planning" thread? It is interesting, and I wasn't up on the Northeastern stuff.
 
TheRifleman said:
Everybody that goes to the Seaport is not even from Boston. They are all transplants or upper class from other countries or states.
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I hope you're purposefully differentiating between "going to" (i.e., visiting) Seaport vs. "living" in Seaport. If your point is about those living there being from other countries or states, then you'd be wrong for the most part.
 
jass is injecting a really important element to this discussion.

This whole fiasco is not about binary racism, or the logic of fairness.

It is about how people feel. Counting one basketball court is a snide rejection of a thoughtful point of discourse.

This discussion is about the fact that the planners and officials could have done better.

I am pro-growth and pro-seaport for crying out loud. But the fact of the matter is, they could have done better (in a lot of ways, but this particular discussion is about fostering a sense of inclusion of blacks in a designed-from-scratch neighborhood). They should have done better because a) its the right thing to do, and b) because some amount of public money was spent, so why not be strategic about the use of that money toward the betterment of the lives of the full cross-section of residents and taxpayers.

Taking the high-road means ensuring that review committees are cross-sectionally representative. It means making sure offsets are optimally spent. This isn't about overt racism (this time), it's about making a freaking effort (because your residents are telling you an effort needs to be made). These residents are not acting entitled about being able to afford luxury housing.

I am honestly a little bit appalled by the total-brush-off this discourse is getting from the (presumably) white contributors to this site. NO one is asking to cancel seaport development plans, only to add a few subtle considerations to the development and planning process. How hard is that, honestly?

jass I guess we're in it alone on here.
 
jass said:
^If you're not interested in having an actual discussion, save your trolling and fuck off to reddit.



Tennis is predominantly played by wealthier, whiter people.

Basketball is predominantly played by lower income, darker people.

"But Serena Williams!" "My black coworker plays tennis!" "Oprah said she hates basketball!"

Nothing is binary, but we can speak about majorities, or a preponderance.
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Imo the factors that lead to the wealth holding individuals becoming rich over other races of people is the bigger issue than expensive waterfront property. This is an expensive area, rightfully so its waterfront in downtown Boston, rich people are going to move here. The fact that many black people dont have as clear a path to wealth here vs others is where the issue lies, not the neighborhood that they move into once rich. So I agree with you guys as well but for a different reason as my opinion of "why" is different.

I dont think the neighborhood is inherently bad. I think that other races are having a harder time getting the wealth to move into one of these neighborhoods. I dont think adding basketball courts here is going to court black people to the area.
 
jass said:
^If you're not interested in having an actual discussion, save your trolling and fuck off to reddit.
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First of all, I think it's becoming clear that you are turning into the biggest troll on this forum. Nobody else snipes at people with the low-blow personal attacks quite like you!

With that said, I'll bite a bit on the Brooklyn Park article you posted...

"But a spate of courtside fights among rowdy visitors, punctuated by gunfire last year, has prompted the police, at times, to shut down Pier 2, where the courts stand."

I could surmise that gunfire would be unpopular with the locals.

"Courtside fisticuffs, they say, are just a result of teenagers being teenagers — and isn’t that what happens in parks?"

I didn't see this stuff happen in the parks I used to go to.
 
If the argument is "there should be more public amenities in the Seaport that appeal to a wide range of people" then I am 100% on board with that.

What I have an issue with is saying "Seaport lacks amenity X therefore it is racist" since the Seaport lacks a LOT of amenities that appeal to all sorts of people. Is the Seaport anti-intellectual because it doesn't have a library or univserity? No, it's a failure of public planning. Same thing with parks and other amenities.
 
bigpicture7 said:
jass is injecting a really important element to this discussion.

This whole fiasco is not about binary racism, or the logic of fairness.

It is about how people feel. Counting one basketball court is a snide rejection of a thoughtful point of discourse.

This discussion is about the fact that the planners and officials could have done better.

I am pro-growth and pro-seaport for crying out loud. But the fact of the matter is, they could have done better (in a lot of ways, but this particular discussion is about fostering a sense of inclusion of blacks in a designed-from-scratch neighborhood). They should have done better because a) its the right thing to do, and b) because some amount of public money was spent, so why not be strategic about the use of that money toward the betterment of the lives of the full cross-section of residents and taxpayers.

Taking the high-road means ensuring that review committees are cross-sectionally representative. It means making sure offsets are optimally spent. This isn't about overt racism (this time), it's about making a freaking effort (because your residents are telling you an effort needs to be made). These residents are not acting entitled about being able to afford luxury housing.

I am honestly a little bit appalled by the total-brush-off this discourse is getting from the (presumably) white contributors to this site. NO one is asking to cancel seaport development plans, only to add a few subtle considerations to the development and planning process. How hard is that, honestly?

jass I guess we're in it alone on here.
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Yes, all this.


Let me throw in yet another example:

Microsoft spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing the "Kinect" camera for the Xbox 360. This camera was intended to capture the living room environment so players could be in the game.

Extensive testing was done so the thing could even differentiate between individual fingers as players jumped around unique living rooms in a wide range of lighting scenarios.

So the thing is released, and people buy it.

And it doesn't work with black people.

Was Microsoft being racist? BANNING black people from enjoying their product?

Obviously not. I mean, money speaks after all. They want to sell their product to as many people as possible!

So what happened is that Microsoft didn't really have any black people on the development team. Or black testers.

Nobody said "lets fuck over black people" but because no black people were involved in the development, there was no one to say "uh guys, this isnt working".

So the intention wasn't racist. But the product ended up being racist because the team was blind to the issue.


And the point is, as bigpicture stated, the same thing happens when you develop a brand new neighborhood, you get 20 expert voices in the room, but you don't include any black people who can say "uh guys, what about us?"

Taking the high-road means ensuring that review committees are cross-sectionally representative. It means making sure offsets are optimally spent. This isn't about overt racism (this time), it's about making a freaking effort (because your residents are telling you an effort needs to be made). These residents are not acting entitled about being able to afford luxury housing.
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AKA, this.
 
FenwayResident said:
If the argument is "there should be more public amenities in the Seaport that appeal to a wide range of people" then I am 100% on board with that.

What I have an issue with is saying "Seaport lacks amenity X therefore it is racist" since the Seaport lacks a LOT of amenities that appeal to all races. It's a failure of public planning, not racism.
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The mark of a good, valuable discussion is one where the different parties begin to converge on understanding each other.

I agree with your statement.

But here's where I want to push further on a key point:
FenwayResident said:
What I have an issue with is saying "Seaport lacks amenity X therefore it is racist" since the Seaport lacks a LOT of amenities that appeal to all races. It's a failure of public planning, not racism.
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There is a group of residents who have been saying, repeatedly (and one's head has been in the sand if you think this Globe expose is the first time), that they have been systematically excluded from planning processes, over and over again. Again, this group feels this way. So, how hard is it to admit "yes, we should have done a better job including and engaging blacks in the planning process?"

It is not that hard to admit that.
 
bigpicture7 said:
There is a group of residents who have been saying, repeatedly (and one's head has been in the sand if you think this Globe expose is the first time), that they have been systematically excluded from planning processes, over and over again. That their race has been consistently absence from planning boards and review committees. Again, they feel this way. So, how hard is it to admit "yes, we should have done a better job including and engaging blacks in the planning process?"
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Yup, and you see this dismissed all the time.

"Well I attended the meeting and make a comment why didnt you?"

(because the meeting was at 3pm on a Tuesday and I had work).

Or in worse cases of privilege, folks who have ins with the officials and don't realize that 99% of the people don't.


Folks, when someone raises the concern of race, try not to immediately shut it down by saying any discussion about race is "garbage" or "made up" or "hysteria".

Maybe it's bs, but maybe there's something there.
 
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