Listening to politicians and economists talk about the current crisis it is easy to see that most of them don’t get what is really going on. Most of them want to get back to the status quo of the last 20 years. Unfortunately that status quo evaporated in a blink of an eye, caused mainly by the fact that most of the development policies of this country from the last 50 years created an over inflated bubble that was built on the unsustainable idea of continued growth in the housing sector. As a real estate agent once told me, “Not everyone should own a house.” But the politicians needed to fuel that dream to get votes. Obama can only do so much when he is up against a congress of delusional egotists clinging on desperately to only what gets them re-elected.

American Grandstand – Bank Hearings

But what really got my eye was how Florida tied in Geography and Urban Planning to all this.

If there is one constant in the history of capitalist development, it is the ever-more-intensive use of space. Today, we need to begin making smarter use of both our urban spaces and the suburban rings that surround them—packing in more people, more affordably, while at the same time improving their quality of life. That means liberal zoning and building codes within cities to allow more residential development, more mixed-use development in suburbs and cities alike, the in-filling of suburban cores near rail links, new investment in rail, and congestion pricing for travel on our roads. Not everyone wants to live in city centers, and the suburbs are not about to disappear. But we can do a much better job of connecting suburbs to cities and to each other, and allowing regions to grow bigger and denser without losing their velocity.

The 21st century has just begun and already we are getting primed for a radical shift in the basic fabric of our society. Some changes will be fast and sudden (such as this economic crisis) and other will take a long time, probably an entire generation, to mature. As Florida says, cities are not going anywhere, but it will be interesting to see what happens to some Sun Belt cities in the next 50 years. Will Phoenix and Las Vegas be the new Detroit? Will the hundreds of acres of unsold homes decay and return to nature while the central cities that once spread out for forever shrink and condense? Given the history of redevelopment in places like Buffalo and Detroit it wouldn’t be surprising if the leaders of these newly decaying cities try the same tired redevelopment schemes that Rust Belt towns tried in the 1980s, most of which failed miserably.

The cities that will win and prosper in the 21st century will be the ones that see this economic crisis as a new beginning, a chance to throw out now obsolete building patterns of the 20th century and focus on planting the seeds for economic engines of the 21st. Cities do not need to grow outwards anymore, though there will still be an aversion to tall buildings in many places. The key is balance, a particular city needs to find out what densities work for it and lay the groundwork for rebuilding neighborhoods that are places rather than faceless subdivisions. Many inner cities are still bombed out moonscapes that need serious investment. People moved to the suburbs for space and in leaving the cities they created space by letting their old neighborhoods decay. These are the areas that need cultivation the most, the old rotting infrastructure should be torn down and new schools and roads and parks need to be built, but only where they need to be built.

Some places, such as suburban Phoenix don’t need new roads and schools to attract people. If the future of Sun Belt cities is anything like Rust Belt cities then the opposite approach is needed. Cities need to know when and how to contract, not grow. Drive from Albany, NY to Detroit and all you will see is mile after mile of depression. The cities you pass left their glory periods long ago and while it was worth while to try redevelopment, these places need to come out of their denial; they are not coming back. The land in these cities could be better used as parks or even urban farming rather than trying to build a new casino or convention center. Since most of these communities are poor to the level of 3rd world standards urban farming would be a fantastic way to get their citizens much needed fresh food while at the same time creating sustainable jobs.

This economic crisis is just the beginning of the rebirth of the American city.

Most of us in the pro-development pool think that community groups have too much power but I think that is a very one sided view. Why is it that these people think they need to get together in the first place? I think that it is because they see the city fighting against them and they feel threatened. If we could have a system where all three parties, the city, the developers, and the citizens, had equal say in development then I think we might be better off; a checks and balances system if you will.

Obviously the role of the government is to speak and fight for the citizens but as we all know this many times isn’t the case.

The BRA used to work along the top-down approach. They were the educated elite and their new plans for the city would fix all its problems. As time has proved over and over this is the wrong way to do things. We need a bottom up approach. But can a massive bureaucracy work bottom-up? I think it can and it has to if we are going to seriously start fixing the problems of the city.

I firmly believe that a city is only as strong as it’s weakest neighborhood. Sure New York has Midtown, the Upper East Side, and Park Slope, but it also has the South Bronx, Bed-Sty, and East New York. I think it is an Utopian dream to think that a city will never have slums or ghettos; I believe that they are inevitable. But what I don’t think is inevitable is that they have to be places where people are beaten down, places that are broken with broken people begetting more generations of broken people. I think that we need to see neighborhoods as not just real estate but as functioning organisms, much like the organs of a body. If you had healthy lungs but a dieing liver, sure you could breath but you would still be dieing. I think low income neighborhoods should be places where the weakest in society can go and survive, and where they can even bring themselves up and eventually move out. This was the vision of Jane Jacobs and I think that it is a noble and attainable one.

What I think the BRA needs to be is the agent that regulates the neighborhoods of Boston to make sure each is working correctly. You might think that most neighborhoods won’t need much help but just look at how much stink the Back Bay or Beacon Hill makes when a new building is proposed. The BRA needs to have representatives in every neighborhood that are on the ground and can talk to community groups, and so that community groups and citizens know who they are (perhaps they are elected?) so that people don’t have to feel so powerless. The fact that there are so many community groups in Boston should be a good thing, it should show that the people there actually care about the future of their communities, that they want them to be better places with good transportation, good schools, and safe streets. If developers had no walls against them then Boston would look like Houston.

Part 3: Lechmere and Kendall Sq

I took the T from North Station to Lechmere to see some of the new construction that has gone on over the last two years, notably Northpoint and Archstone-Smith. Archstone-Smith is gorgeous and towers over the neighborhood, but because it is set back behind the highway and T line it doesn’t overpower the small residential streets of Lechmere. I would describe it as post-modern art deco. The top reminded me of the tower of the Landmark Center in the Fenway, only made out of colored glass. I think the image on the website has been shrunk down or Photoshoped to make the building appear less tall. In reality it is massive, almost like the giant housing complexes you find in Hong Kong.

The story of Northpoint is a sad one. The area in question is prime real estate if there ever was. Located next to two T stations, a highway (set back enough not to hurt property values), abutting new parks built along the Charles River, and a stones throw to North Station, Northpoint should have been Boston’s answer to Battery Park City in Lower Manhattan. The land used to be train yards and lay abandoned for decades. About 10 years ago developers started putting together a proposal to build a mini city there, complete with housing, office space, lab space, and a new T station that would be built to allow for the Green Line extension to West Medford (whenever the state gets around to that). The land was cleared and a couple of buildings started to go up when the developers got pissed off at one another and started suing. They finished two of the residential units and they are now open, which if you like living in a sand pit is great.

What is most depressing is what has been built is seriously nice. The quality of the design and the materials used are top notch and the townhouse design is ultra modern. The buildings are not overwhelming and have these great elevated front yards that you walk up to. They are even installing a playground in the front yard area. It will be a real shame if all that is ever built of this project are these two buildings.

Next I moved into Lechmere proper. I’m not sure most Bostonians have ever actually been to Lechmere. Sure they have been to Cambridgeside or have seen it on the T map, but I’m sure most people have never taken the time to walk around this quiet working class neighborhood. Stepping off the T you come to OneFirst, a huge residential complex recently finished that combines old industrial warehouses with new construction. I have to say this has proved to me that you can be modern and still not need to build huge extroverted boxes that impose themselves on a neighborhood. Instead of building one giant building, the developers built a number of different looking buildings that all relate to the streets they are on. The buildings on Cambridge St are 6 stories and have retail on the first floor, while the buildings on quiet side street off Cambridge step down to the lower scale and change design to fit in with the rowhouses along the 2nd St. So perfectly did they do this that I didn’t realized what I was looking at was new construction until I took a closer look. I could go on about this complex but it would just be more of the same flattery.

I had worked a temp job at one point in Lechmere the summer before I moved to New York and I happened upon the offices on this walk. I initially didn’t recognize the place because across the street were a series of townhouses that I had never seen before and were so perfect at recreating the colonial period that you find in the older parts of Cambridge that I wasn’t sure they were even modern until I saw the garages in the back. They say make no small plans but these infill developments have inspired me more than the new 1,000 ft tower the mayor wants to build, or Harvard’s total renewal of Allston.

Kendall Sq is changing fast as well. Before I moved, Genzime had just put up their award winning headquarters and there was talk of building some condos in the area. The area just north of Kendall Sq is a sandbox; the condos are going up looking classy and modern, a number of new lab facilities have gone up and are going up, and I stumbled upon a new police station that blew me away. It had these great metal (probably aluminum) details, but used brinck and granite for the faciade. The brick work was interesting and distinctive and the windows were tall with quality frames. I’ve seen so many cheap ugly condos going up in Manhattan and Brooklyn that I forgot what good construction looked like.

I headed off to Harvard Sq where I usually seem to end up anytime I’m in Boston. Some of the stores have changed but most of the square hasn’t. I went into the Harvard Coop and ran into a few people I had worked with 3 years ago; I’m sure that made them feel fantastic for lasting that long (I worked there a year). I picked up a copy of Italio Calvino’s Invisible Cities which I first read down in the break room there. Outside while waiting for Ian I ran into a young woman who I had worked with the day before at the AAG conference. She was from China which made the encounter interesting because we were standing right next to a group of pro-Tibet protesters in the Pit.

That night I went back to Arlington for the first time since I had moved. A few things have changed but not much (the town is no longer dry). Ian and I drove around and he pointed out little things that had changed and we talked about old times. It never hit me how suburban the town is. I always considered it more urban than most suburbs but now after living in New York the place seems like a grave yard. It was only 8:30 but there was no one out, the place was a ghost town. I guess I never noticed it before.

Part 1: JP to Back Bay

I started by walking back up South Huntington Ave and Huntington Ave to get some pictures of some interesting buildings I had seen the day before. The sun was shining bright but was ducking behind clouds now and then which was frustrating when trying to line up a shot only to have the sun move behind a cloud when I took the picture.

Off Brigham Circle there are two streets I used to love walking down when I went to WIT, Wigglesworth St and Worthington St (word to awesome British names). Most of the housing around Mission Hill are either ugly modern high rises or tired old triple-deckers. These two streets, and only these two streets, are lined with stately and handsome townhouses that look like they were picked up from the South End and planted down on the other end of town.

Further down Huntington Ave I walked around the campus of WIT. I cannot believe I went there, not because it was a bad school but because I could never see myself fitting into the townie-frat boy crowd there (I have changed since I went there but I still cannot see my past self there). I guess that’s why I left. I have seen a lot of change and a lot of places in the 4 years since I left WIT but the place and the people look timeless (about 2001).

I turned down Ruggles St to check out a new dorm being built by Northeastern next to the Ruggles Orange Line station on Columbus Ave, a stretch of highway with a park on one side and an empty lot on the other. This area was where acres of land was cleared in the 1960s to build a gigantic interchange for two highways that thankfully were never built. The new Orange Line and Southwest Corridor park system were supposed to help bring back the area, but the basic laws of real estate still applied (location, location, location) and the “neighborhood” is now only comprised of housing projects and a large police station.
The new dorm is horrendous. It is completely out of scale with the area, though when the area only has a couple of short buildings surrounded by fields being out of scale isn’t much of an issue. The main problem is the use of precast concrete panels that are painted to look like brick and already suffering from water damage despite the building being nowhere near complete. The projects across the street are literally nicer and in better condition. Northeastern has been building new dorms on the Huntington Ave side of the tracks for years and they have always been attractive and well built. I guess this shows what the university thinks of it’s poor neighbors.

I next walked down Tremont St heading north. The South End has two parts; the area above Mass Ave (the gentrified area full of artists and gays), and the land south of Mass Ave (projects, abandoned lots, a highway, and then what’s left of Dudley Sq.) If you stand at Mass Ave you can see the difference clearly when you look north and then south. I had never ventured south of Mass Ave so walking up Tremont St seemed like something I needed to do to get the full South End experience.
What I found is an area that shows signs of life despite extreme social issues. Tremont St is lined with old walk ups next to new or newish affordable housing. The side streets are a mix of old school low-rise projects next to new affordable housing that you probably wouldn’t think where projects unless someone told you. The streets where still sterile and devoid of life since it seemed that this was new housing, though I think this is the result of the new approach to dealing with failed projects; rip them down and put up mixed income housing. Will it work? Time will tell.

Up on Mass Ave you come to the area where the wealthy elite of Boston first built their mansions and townhouses, only to abandon them for the even more luxurious Back Bay. I made a quick detour up Mass Ave to inspect an infill project I had read about. It was very nice, contextual with red brick but modern in form. I especially liked the tall thin windows it used. I have a huge issues with most windows used in standard housing construction nowadays. I find them short and fat, not unlike the average American. This building, along with the new housing I had just seen, proved that you can work within the urban row house context and still be modern and interesting.

I made my way up Columbus Ave, which at this point is lined with stately brownstones that look straight out of Fort Green or Park Slope in Brooklyn. Most have first floor additions that are now funky retail stores, signs that I am now in YUPy territory. I weaved my way down side streets between Tremont and Columbus, admiring the variety of houses along quiet streets designed along the lines of London Squares; a median of elegant trees and rainbows of flowers running down the center of the street.
I walked down Warren Ave and turned on to Dartmouth St. Here I took another detour to explore Tent City. Tent City is an affordable housing development built after some Boston residents protested the lack of affordable housing in the city by setting up a tent city on cleared land across the street from Back Bay Station. The development is notable because it gracefully transitions from the low rise South End to the skyscraper canyons on the Back Bay. It also was one of the first post-modern housing developments that used contextual architectural elements instead of being just another brick box (a number of these bring boxes line Tremont St and Cloumbus Ave which seriously clash with the highly detailed townhouses.)

I walked down to the Prudential Center to see the new Mandarin Oriental hotel going up. I still don’t know how I feel about it. The massing is nice but I think the details are far too sparse for a building in such a prominent location. I think something like the Hotel Chelsea in Manhattan would be more appropriate; Gothic elements or perhaps a darker colored brick.

I hopped on the Green Line at Hynes and made my way to Park St for lunch. I never realized how spacious the Green Line stations are in the Back Bay. The arched ceilings give them the feeling of an asp in a modest cathedral. I don’t think a Bostonian would ever, EVER, think of a T station like a cathedral but seeing them after being used to New York station with their low ceilings and dark interiors makes the T stations feel much less oppressive.

Part 2: Downtown Crossing, Government Center, and the North End Parks

One of the most exciting areas in Boston, IMO, is Downtown Crossing. Once the Herald Sq of Boston (Macy’s and Gimbels vs Filene’s and Jordan Mash), DTX fell on hard times when people began to move out to the suburbs and the retail followed. In the 1970s and 80s the area was known as the Combat Zone, high crime and a flourishing sex industry pushed out anyone who hadn’t left for the suburbs. Through intense community activism and help from City Hall the area was slowly cleaned up and became a bustling retail crossroads once again. But when a number of key anchor tenants, Barns & Noble and HMV, left the area started to falter. Then Macy’s bought Filene’s and decided to close the original Filene’s (which just happened to be across the street from Macy’s).

Over the last 7 years the city has pushed to revitalize the area. A number of new condo towers have gone up, along with new hotels and office towers, which has helped bring more street life to the area. Suffolk University and Emmerson College have begun fixing up old theaters and converting abandoned buildings into dorms. Two buildings currently under construction, 45 Province St and One Franklin, a new tower going up on the site of the former Filene’s building (though incorporating the historic building in the new tower) has me most fired up for the revitalization of DTX.

From here I explored the area a little bit, not knowing where I really wanted to go. I made my way up to City Hall and realizing I had never actually been inside, decided to check it out. The metal detector guy noticed my camera in my bag going through the machine and commented on how nice it was. The first thing that struck me was how open the building was. From the outside it looks like a huge bunker but inside it is light and airy with natural light coming in all over the place. No wonder it is a bitch to heat and cool. The doors to the courtyard were closed and the security check point gave the building even more of a fortress like feeling than the building already has. Still I think it is gorgeous and in desperate need for a modern makeover.
I had heard there was a giant model of downtown Boston up in the Boston Redevelopment Authority office so I went up to see if I could get in to see it. The receptionist told me I needed to have someone open the room for me but she couldn’t find the person with the key so she just sent me down the hall (seriously, I think they are far too trusting to send a scruffy hipster kid down through their offices unescorted). The door to the model room was closed but if you’ve ever seen Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, it kinda looked like that room Indy goes into to find the real burial spot of the Ark. The lights weren’t on so the models of the towers were back lit by the sunlight coming in from the window. Mayor Menino has proposed building a 1,000 ft tall tower in the Financial District and the model for the tower commands the entire room (which is saying a lot when you have a room sized model of every building in downtown Boston). I immediately realized that if this building was ever constructed it would be the Prudential Building 2.0 and we would all regret it. The tower fails for the same reason all modern buildings do, it looks great as a conceptual model that an architect can show a person powerful enough to get it built. I went back down the hall, picked up some info on the BRA and internships and headed out.

I next headed to see the new North End Parks built after the Big Dig. I had seen the Chinatown and Financial District Parks (not very inspiring) but hadn’t seen these. Right off the bat I noticed a huge design flaw; the parks where elevated (due to the presence of highway off ramps below them) which blocks a pedestrians ability to see users of the parks. All you see walking down the street is a wall of shrubbery. Above, on the parks, there are nice lawns where you can sunbathe or play games, along with a promenade under a pergola which will actually be very nice in the summer time.

The old Central Artery was described as a giant gash cutting though the city. To take the analogy further, the new parks are very much like a giant scar. The newly planted grass and trees represent a scab. The area still feels disconnected from the rest of the city, but like all wounds, will heal in time. Buildings will be built around the parks to connect the city and bring in people, and the plantings will evolve and mature. The scar will remain but the wound will heal.

Up at North Station you can just start to see the wound healing. A new mixed use apartment building is going up where once an elevated train track ran. The lots next to it are barren, awaiting brighter economic conditions, but the streets are laid and the lamps are in. The Bullfinch Triangle will soon be repaired.

I hopped on the T to head over to Lechmere and on to Kendall Sq.

Part 3 and the rest of my journey tomorrow.