southwest expressway...

[JonFrum]

I wasn't talking about West Roxbury/Hyde Park. I meant South End/Roxbury/Jamaica Plain. The Orange line.

That area has enormous roads criss-crossing it. Melnea Cass, Columbus, Malcolm X, etc. Walking there feels like being in a highway median strip, especially with the empty vacant lots around you. I think the problem has more to do with zoning and NIMBY fights than anything.

^ Across the street from Roxbury Crossing station.

Please. The problem has more to do with murder. That land should be no less valuable than Jamaica Plain, where a single condo in a three decker can set you back $250K. It's the proximity to people walking around with loaded guns in their waistbands that prevents that lower Roxbury strip from being developed. They put Police Headquarters in there with the promise that it would lead to the renewal of the district. How's that working out for you? Hundreds of cops can't even make people feel safe there. Northeastern went in there because they had to - they have no where else to grow.

 

[massmotorist]

Please. The problem has more to do with murder. That land should be no less valuable than Jamaica Plain, where a single condo in a three decker can set you back $250K. It's the proximity to people walking around with loaded guns in their waistbands that prevents that lower Roxbury strip from being developed. They put Police Headquarters in there with the promise that it would lead to the renewal of the district. How's that working out for you? Hundreds of cops can't even make people feel safe there. Northeastern went in there because they had to - they have no where else to grow.

Blunt. But completely correct, I think.

 

[Matthew]

Vacant land is not helping to solve any crime problem, and likely exacerbating it.

Police cannot stop crime alone. Never could, never will. There must be law-abiding citizens out and about in the neighborhood. And there's nothing about a vacant lot which attracts such people.

 

[JonFrum]

Vacant land is not helping to solve any crime problem, and likely exacerbating it.

Police cannot stop crime alone. Never could, never will. There must be law-abiding citizens out and about in the neighborhood. And there's nothing about a vacant lot which attracts such people.

Developers have no responsibility to put their own money at risk to fill in vacant lots to attract law-abiding citizens to the neighborhood. The city put taxpayer money into police headquarters in an effort to do that very thing, and it failed. About a week ago, a guy was found shot a couple blocks up from BPD HQ. Not a neighborhood I want to move into or open a shop in.

 

[Matthew]

That's why nobody ever builds in the South End. Right?

It's not as simple as "developers get scared off by crime" any more than it is as simple as "crime gets scared off by development."

The developers will go for it if they are given permission and they see a profit. My impression has been that the city and NIMBYs have blocked permission for decades.

 

[massmotorist]

It's not as simple as "developers get scared off by crime" any more than it is as simple as "crime gets scared off by development."

Those two quotes aren't mutually exclusive.

The developers will go for it if they are given permission and they see a profit. My impression has been that the city and NIMBYs have blocked permission for decades.

New space is expensive. Developers aren't going to see a profit if they build retail space no store wants to rent (because no customers would come) and condos where no one who could afford them would buy.

The only way land like this would get developed would be investment from something like a nonprofit community development corporation

 

[Matthew]

This is space adjacent to JP, Mission Hill, Roxbury and the South End. It's adjacent to the community college and other institutions. It's near Madison Park and the Longwood Medical area. It's a rapid transit station on the Orange line as well as a major bus corridor.

As datadyne mentioned, it's going to be developed. What took so long is politics.

 

[datadyne007]

We got access to the One Roxbury Crossing plans and such (from the WIT faculty) during our final studio which was doing a master plan for Roxbury Crossing. Here are some excerpts of the latest iteration (it's gone through a million already) from P-25.

 

[Kahta]

Gentrification has a nice way of making neighborhoods safe....

JP being a good example.

 

[Charlie_mta]

Man, way to throw Northeastern under the bus.

LOL. I grew up in Cambridge so am a bit partial there. I'm going to my 45th reunion of Cambridge High & Latin school in a few weeks.

As someone else here mentioend, the two ends of Cambridge, Alewife and the MIT area, actually have really good access to regional expressways. Even the center part has access to the Mass Pike. The SW Corridor does not have that, except for the Melnea Cass Blvd route to the SE Expressway. And really, Roxbury still has the bad reputation, although the Bromley-Heath housing project is much improved from the war zone it was in the 70's and 80's.

 

[Matthew]

Just because Columbus Ave, Malcolm X Blvd and Melnea Cass don't have the word "highway" in their name doesn't mean they aren't effectively highways.

Stand at the corner by Roxbury Crossing and you are surrounded with 8 lanes of speeding traffic on both sides.

Those roads are effectively at-grade highways, like the old ones constructed before the Interstate system. And they are almost as horrible to walk along as a grade-separated highway.

The SW corridor most certainly has access to ridiculously wide roads. And it hasn't helped a damn bit.

And if the Inner Belt was built, then Cambridgeport would look like that picture I posted above.

 

[massmotorist]

Just because Columbus Ave, Malcolm X Blvd and Melnea Cass don't have the word "highway" in their name doesn't mean they aren't effectively highways.

Stand at the corner by Roxbury Crossing and you are surrounded with 8 lanes of speeding traffic on both sides.

Those roads are effectively at-grade highways, like the old ones constructed before the Interstate system. And they are almost as horrible to walk along as a grade-separated highway.

The SW corridor most certainly has access to ridiculously wide roads. And it hasn't helped a damn bit.

And if the Inner Belt was built, then Cambridgeport would look like that picture I posted above.

It's not about wideness. It's about actual, real-world ability to get from here to there. The reason we built interstates was because the pre-interstate at-grade highways were inadequate. Just because two roads are equally as bad from your perspective as a pedestrian doesn't mean they're equally as good from my perspective as a driver. The operating speeds are low, they're not limited access or grade-separated, there are stoplights and pedestrians, and their capacity and safety is far, far lower than that of an interstate both overall and on a per lane-mile basis.

 

[omaja]

^ We're talking about a city with I-93 a mile or less to the east of those roads, for crying out loud. They don't need to be limited-access and grade-separated.

Bottom line: the SWX didn't happen and isn't coming back. So if the argument is what kinds of upgrades should happen to make road travel easier from the southwest, the only real solution is to upgrade I-93 (full-width shoulders, useful HOV/HOT lanes, etc.).