Greenway's future just the beginning
The problem with the Rose Kennedy Greenway is that we named it.
That's not intended as a slur on the late Rose Kennedy. But it is intended as shorthand for a conceptual problem, one that, so far, has prevented the city and the state from figuring out what to do once the old elevated expressway finally comes down.
It's a conceptual problem that Ken Greenberg, Toronto-based urban designer par excellence, was hired to solve.
Some history: The Fitzgerald Expressway - once fancifully billed "the highway in the sky," more lately dubbed by Mayor Tom Menino as "Boston's other green monster" - was built in the 1950s by cutting a swath through downtown Boston. By the time it opened in 1959, the state highway department had torn down 1,000 buildings and displaced 20,000 people. Even before it was finished, people knew it was a bad idea: ugly, disruptive and incapable of handling the traffic that flowed on it.
All of which, as we well know, begat the Big Dig. It also begat a mantra: 27 acres, 27 acres, 27 acres.
That, roughly, was the amount of land taken by the Central Artery and it became the preoccupation of planners and visionaries. What, they wondered, should we do with that "new" land once the Big Dig was finished?
Their preoccupation with the 27 acres was a mistake, and it related to a second error: the "greenway" idea. During the approval process, the state had bowed to demands that 75 percent of the new land be kept as open space. This in turn led to the notion of a thin, 200-foot wide ribbon of parkland, running north to south and stretching for about 1.5 miles. From there the discussion devolved to an argument over what little goodies (parks, greenhouses and so on) should be placed along the way.
So it went for a dozen years. Yet after all that time, the
plans that emerged were uninteresting and cliched.
Those few, endlessly debated acres meshed uncomfortably, if at all, with the
rest of
Into this stepped a frustrated Menino, who in December brought in Greenberg to rethink everything. Greenberg, Menino and the Boston Redevelopment Authority are now shopping around the first draft of that work. Billed as the "Crossroads Initiative," it amounts to a long overdue, "out of the box" (in Menino's words) challenge to conventional wisdom.
First,
Greenberg argues, forget about the 27 acres. The planning exercise we face is really about four square miles - roughly the size of
downtown
Greenberg identifies six major roadways that cross the old artery. He suggests concentrating development activity on those, rather than on the greenway, making them into links that tie together parts of the city.
Thus, for
example, he proposes having the old
It's a simple,
even obvious idea: The rest of
Indeed, if Greenberg is to be faulted here, it is for not going far enough. He still pays some homage to the greenway idea - speaking, for example, of keeping it as a walking path or using it as a naming convention for nearby buildings (for example, "53 The Greenway"). The flaw in doing so can be seen in Greenberg's aerial depictions of his plans, where one can still see the outlines of the old central artery.
That's been true of every aerial view ever prepared, by the way, and it's a mistake. Many have written movingly of how the elevated highway was akin to a wound or a gash in the city. True enough. But why do we make a fetish of the scar that's left behind? By my measure, we will have succeeded when someone flying overhead looks down and can't tell a highway was ever there.
Nevertheless, Menino and Greenberg are clearly on the right course here. Greenberg's late arrival to the planning process has caused much chagrin among those who thought it nearly done. His new plans are sure to upset them even more. Too bad. In Greenberg's words, this is an "unparalleled opportunity in the history of cities." If it takes a few more years to get it right, so be it.
Talk back to Tom Keane at tomkeane@tomkeane.com.