Was bulldozing Columbia Point a mistake?

stick n move

stick n move

Superstar
Joined
Oct 14, 2009
Messages
11,281
Reaction score
15,663
We all talk about the great loss that happened in the west end. What about Columbia point? I know at the time it was a warzone, but times change Bedford Stuyveson in Brooklyn is a yuppie community now. They essentially bulldozed thousands of public housing units without replacement, without ever trying to fix the problem. I know it was a disgusting, rundown, shitty place. My dad has worked in Dorchester his whole life and said you would see cars with no wheels, tires on fire, trash everywhere. Im not saying it was some oasis. Im just saying looking at the housing problem now maybe they should have tried to clean it up. We seem to be trigger happy on bulldozing entire neighborhoods in this city. Call me crazy but I kind of like the look, when cleaned up, of buildings like this in Boston and the Bronx, Brooklyn etc. It brings some nostalgia and character. Idk what do you guys think. It never had a chance to become anything so heres some pictures of how bad it was. You never know if it was not bulldozed it could be a thriving affordable community today, with some nicer buildings built in between like they are doing in the south end.


This image appears to be taken when Umass was under construction.

GC_140630_MJ_024.jpg


content


Kids%20at%20Pool-381299.jpg


hqdefault.jpg


Columbia%20point%202-381298.jpg


3514872196_6c89a4452b.jpg


150701_MJ_001.jpg
 
Re: was bulldozing columbia point a mistake

No, that was never high quality housing stock. The 45 degree orientation from the street is a deliberate space waster - it creates all these unusable patches of grass. The density was only modest and there was little to no retail.

Walk down Main Street and Portland Street between Kendall and Central Squares and you'll see this style of public housing that survived until today. There is a little crime and violence in that area, but it is mostly under control. Still, it isn't a nice place to live. It doesn't feel like a vibrant neighborhood at any time of day or weekend compared with the adjacent Area 4 neighborhood. I'd love to see those giant blocks razed and filled with mixed-income midrises with a smattering of small-scale retail.
 
Re: was bulldozing columbia point a mistake

I agree but not everywhere has to have retail, people just need an affordable place to live and can walk to whatever grocery/transit needs they have. There is pretty much nowhere to live thats affordable in the city outside of geneva ave and a few other streets. Jp and a few areas still have this type of housing left along with charlestown/southie.
 
Re: was bulldozing columbia point a mistake

stick n move said:
I agree but not everywhere has to have retail, people just need an affordable place to live and can walk to whatever grocery/transit needs they have.
Click to expand...

You can't have nothing - that isn't an urban space. You also don't need to be a retail destination. An urban neighborhood needs at least a convenience store, a coffee shop, a pizza joint, etc. For example, Cambridgeport is a solid 10-15 walk to the T, but from anywhere in Cambridgeport you can get a hot coffee or a cold soda within 2-3 blocks. That is an acceptably low level, really bare minimum retail presence. If you don't have that stuff then you don't have a walkable neighborhood. What you'll have is either a ghetto or a car-dependent (literally "sub-"urban) neighborhood. Neither is the affordable middle-class neighborhood you are hoping for.
 
Re: was bulldozing columbia point a mistake

That why I said it could be filled in over the years there was plenty of space to add more buildings. They're doing it in JP.
 
Re: was bulldozing columbia point a mistake

fattony said:
You can't have nothing - that isn't an urban space. You also don't need to be a retail destination. An urban neighborhood needs at least a convenience store, a coffee shop, a pizza joint, etc. For example, Cambridgeport is a solid 10-15 walk to the T, but from anywhere in Cambridgeport you can get a hot coffee or a cold soda within 2-3 blocks. That is an acceptably low level, really bare minimum retail presence. If you don't have that stuff then you don't have a walkable neighborhood. What you'll have is either a ghetto or a car-dependent (literally "sub-"urban) neighborhood. Neither is the affordable middle-class neighborhood you are hoping for.
Click to expand...

This reminds me of how North Point is essentially dead during the evening/night/early morning. D-e-d. Dead. It doesn't help that the OBrien Hwy separates it from any half-decent urbanism.
 
Re: was bulldozing columbia point a mistake

No, it was not a mistake to bulldoze the Columbia Point projects. They were a massive, isolated prison for poor people. That was wrong on so many levels. I grew up in a similar isolated housing project, Jefferson Park in North Cambridge, in the 1950's and early 60's, and it would take me several pages to describe how much it sucked.
 
Re: was bulldozing columbia point a mistake

Everyone should pick up A Decent Place to Live. It's a great history of Columbia/Harbor Point. TL;DR version: funding cuts left it in near ruins, it had to be torn down, and the area's reinvention served as a major learning lesson for affordable housing funding, design, implementation, and management moving forward. It's basically the first major redesign that incorporated mixed income housing into affordable housing development. It was also the first to have a neighborhood health clinic (in the modern sense of "neighborhood health clinic").
 
Re: was bulldozing columbia point a mistake

Charlie_mta said:
No, it was not a mistake to bulldoze the Columbia Point projects. They were a massive, isolated prison for poor people. That was wrong on so many levels. I grew up in a similar isolated housing project, Jefferson Park in North Cambridge, in the 1950's and early 60's, and it would take me several pages to describe how much it sucked.
Click to expand...

Agreed^^^

These housing projects were massive, unmitigated disasters - so glad this one is gone. I hope society never forgets how bad they were and never considers building anything like them again.
 
Recent studies have pretty conclusively shown that poor people that are isolated in poor neighborhoods have much less upward mobility. Better to integrate poor families in middle class neighborhoods.
 
Columbia Point was a social experiment that failed (like many others) and being torn down was the best thing for it.
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
Columbia Point was a social experiment that failed (like many others) and being torn down was the best thing for it.
Click to expand...

Although its sort of funny that the further "social experiment" of Harbor Point is successful and now the model for how we handle public housing development. The funny part being the idea that developments should be mixed income and contain public services is less an experiment than a no-duh return to the norm. It just took 50 or so years and a couple billion dollars to realize it.
 
underground said:
It just took 50 or so years and a couple billion dollars to realize it.
Click to expand...

And Martin Luther King Jr./the Civil Rights movement to reveal racially discriminatory housing practices. (But yes, all of the above)
 
It was a miserable dump. I tutored kids at the Dever School I the late 60's/early 70's. They'd be here 6 mos, Puerto Rico 6 mos. Limited English skills. Great kids, glad they left for 6 mos. Fires. Riots. Carjacking. Drugs. Whores. Pimps. Crime up the ass.
The joke shopping center that jacked up prices on everything because: only game in town/huge shoplifting losses that got picked by the decent non-shoplifty residents.
Yup, great experiment.
 
Looks awfully similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt–Igoe

Giant square buildings for poor people, big open spaces with little greenery/shrubbery and amenities (the aforementioned pizza joint, coffee shop, convenience store, etc.)

It's interesting that these kinds of buildings DO work in other societies/high-density cities (most of Russia/post-Soviet countries, Asia)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top