The New Urban Ring Design Charette

UR B A N DES IGN CH A R R ET T E

THE NEW URBAN RING September 18 & 19, 1993 Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts

1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000

2

Contents Introduction

1

The Infrastructure Forum and The New Urban Ring M. David Lee

4

Transportation as a Catalyst for Healthy Communities Kenneth E. Kruckemeyer

7

Ring Dreaming and Making Alex Krieger

12

The Need for a Center: Politics, Morphology and the Ring George Thrush

17

Site Programs

22

Selected Projects

29

Acknowledgements

33

Introduction What is The New Urban Ring It has been described as a loop, a belt, a bus line, a subway, an environmentalist’s parking solution, an open-space strategy, part of a regional transportation system, a new approach to urban development, a means for linking jobs and the unemployed, and a even as a paradigm for renewed civic life. But The New Urban Ring can also be understood as the essential foundation on which meaningful urban design might continue to be built in Boston. It offers the chance to connect the disparate experiences of our metropolitan area into a coherent, urbane system of transportation and public space.

But what is it ? The reason that The New Urban Ring is difficult to define is that, for now anyway, it remains merely an idea. It is an idea that seeks to coordinate transportation, economic development, environmental, and urban design issues into a single framework. This framework is a familiar one to those who have studied the physical form of the Boston region. The ring or loop form is already present in the twin highway belts that surround the city: Route 128 and Interstate 495. These roads offer more than a way to by-pass the city’s core, they connect the many radial transportation strands emanating from the city center with circumferential ones. This makes for a network of radial and circumferential roads that makes sense in a region focussed around “the Hub”. These cir1

The New Urban Ring Logo (Graphic by Mary-Ann Agresti)

cumferential roads also served as armatures for economic development in the burgeoning suburban areas after the Second World War. They were seen as necessary infrastructure for successful development of Boston’s outer reaches. The New Urban Ring proposes a similar circumferential system that would operate at the urban, rather than the suburban, scale.

Urban designers and traffic planners have long noted the need for such a system

(Arthur Shurtleff’s 1909 plan shows this explicitly, as does the more recently proposed, and subsequently defeated, I-95 Inner Belt– see Alex Krieger’s essay in this catalogue). But by linking transportation and urban design issues, the proponents of The New Urban Ring have done much more than suggest the insertion of an appropriately scaled transit system, they have explicitly challenged the prioritization of the automobile in transportation planning and by extension challenged the public subsidy of atomized, separated, discrete communities through expenditures on transportation infrastructure. The New Urban Ring creates the opportunity for some new understanding of common, shared space. It does seem fortunate indeed that this spatial condition; this hub with radial spokes would occur in a city like Boston; with its rich heritage of political progressivism and public life.

This catalogue documents the unusual process through which The New Urban Ring has gained life. In its current form, the idea developed as the first project of The Boston Society of Architects’ Infrastructure Forum, a group created and chaired by M. David Lee, F.A.I.A., who served as President of the B.S.A. in 1992 . The Infrastructure Forum is an attempt to join business leaders, government planning agencies, and the design community in a discussion about Boston’s

Kenneth E. Kruckemeyer is another charter member of the Infrastructure Forum, and as the former associate commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Works, he played a critical role in galvanizing public opposition to the Inner-Belt expressway in the 1970’s. For many the halting of I-95 marked a turning point in how we think about transportation infrastructure. No longer would we imagine that the convenience of highspeed automobile traffic should be achieved regardless of the price to be paid by those whose neighborhoods would be destroyed by the resulting highways. This experience has led Kruckemeyer to study the relationship between a variety of transportation systems and the communities they might serve.

His essay, Transportation as a Catalyst for Healthy Communities, applies these ideas to The New Urban Ring.

Though not an Infrastructure Forum member, Alex Krieger, Professor of Urban Design at Harvard University’s Graduate School of

LYNNFIELD

READING

BILLERICA

future. Members of the Forum saw the depression of the Central Artery and the construction of the Third Harbor Tunnel as the end of a planning process that had begun in the 1970’s. Now was the time to look ahead.

M. David Lee’s essay, The Infrastructure Forum and The New Urban Ring documents this process here.

SALEM

PEABODY

WAKEFIELD BURLINGTON

SWAMPSCOTT

BEDFORD

WOBURN

STONEHAM

LYNN

SAUGUS

LEXINGTON WINCHESTER

MALDEN ARLINGTON

MEDFORD

EVERETT

NAHANT

REVERE

arguments. Krieger’s essay, Ring Dreaming and Making, makes clear that this endeavor could be both a step forward and a move to recapture some of what makes Boston’s past so rich.

CHELSEA WALTHAM

BELMONT

SOMERVILLE

WATERTOWN

CAMBRIDGE

Logan

SOUTH BOSTON

BOSTON

NEWTON

WINTHROP

Downtown Airport

Boston Harbor

BROOKLINE WELLESLEY

HULL

DORCHESTER

Quincy Bay

NEEDHAM

QUINCY

Key

DEDHAM

Main Highways

MILTON

Commuter Rail Local Subway

The final essay, The Need for a Center: Politics, Morphology, and the Ring, is an attempt to connect the ring concept with evolving cultural and political metaphors.

It posits The New Urban Ring as the next logical step after both The Melting Pot and The Quilt in terms of how we relate to one another as individuals, as well as to the government and culture that we share.

Transfer Point

WESTWOOD

BRAINTREE NORWOOD

CANTON

Proposed Circumferential Route

RANDOLPH

Commuter Rail and Transit Line Connections Design, has done as much as anyone to bring the idea of The New Urban Ring forward. The difference for Krieger is that the idea is anything but new. His 1986 book, Past Futures: Two Centuries of Imagining Boston, compiles a wealth of information on the history of Boston’s development.

The book documents a long history of civic minded planning and urban design proposals for Boston. It places today’s push towards The New Urban Ring in a context that both humbles its sponsors and strengthens their

Six months before the initial meeting of the Infrastructure Forum, in June of 1992, Northeastern University’s Architecture Concentration held its first Urban Design Charrette (see Catalogue 1, 1992). This event sought to engage area architects, artists, and urban designers in studying the complex areas surrounding Northeastern’s Boston Campus.

The Architecture Concentration saw this event as the first in an annual series that would study different parts of the city, including those which fell under the jurisdiction of more than one political or planning district, and as such remained unconsidered as part of any whole.

In joining the work of the Infrastructure Forum 2

with that of Northeastern’s Urban Design Charrette Series, the work of both became much clearer. By making The New Urban Ring the subject of the second Charrette, both groups began to focus on generating a physical form for The New Urban Ring. This began with seeking information that might serve as part of a development program for different parts of the ring. This appears in the catalogue as Site Programs. These programs were the product of a preliminary charrette convened at Wentworth Institute of Technology with community and institutional representatives in June, 1993. That information was compiled and became the program information used in the ultimate design charrette at Northeastern in September, 1993.

The Second Northeastern University Urban Design Charrette took place over the weekend of September 18 & 19, and drew fifty designers, community group representatives, and neighbors. Northeastern Architecture Concentration Head George Thrush and B.S.A. Infrastructure Forum Chair M. David Lee were joined by Northeastern’s Visiting Distinguished Professor of Political Science and former Governor and Presidential candidate, Michael S. Dukakis in welcoming the participants.

Over the next two days participants generated drawings and diagrams of what exactly 3

The New Urban Ring might be like. They ranged from alignment proposals to street sections, and station proto-types to images of specific intersections. Finally, the work was collected and exhibited at the top of the Prudential Center Tower in Boston’s Back Bay. An opening reception drew hundreds of citizens interested in viewing a possible future for their region. The proposals shown here as Selected Projects have been chosen to show the many possible interpretations that remain for The New Urban Ring.

Finally, as a testament to the large number of area residents, institutions, designers, and public officials who have taken part in planning, creation, and support of this effort, please refer to the section entitled, Acknowledgements.

Essay

EVERETT SOMERVILLE

CHELSEA Sullivan Square

CHARLESTOWN

Cobble Hill

EAST BOSTON

Community College

Harvard University

Lechmere

CAMBRIDGE Allston Landing

Logan Airport

North Station

Downtown

MIT University Park

sR

arle

Ch

Boston University Kenmore Square

r ive

M. David Lee, F.A.I.A. Principal, Stull & Lee Inc. Adjunct Professor of Urban Design Harvard University Graduate School of Design

The Infrastructure Forum and The New Urban Ring

South Station Back Bay

SOUTH END Museum of Fine Arts Northeastern Longwood University Medical Area Wentworth Ruggles Institute

BROOKLINE JAMAICA PLAIN

Boston City Hospital

BU Medical Center

Dudley

SOUTH Megaplex BOSTON Site

Newmarket

ROXBURY DORCHESTER JFK/UMass

Key

Commuter Rail Local Subway Transfer Point Proposed Circumferential Route

Possible Route of The New Urban Ring (Graphic by Mary-Ann Agresti)

In the Fall of 1992 a new committee on infrastructure was created by the Boston Society of Architects. It was quickly decided that to be most effective, the committee should reach out to interested persons and entities beyond the architectural community. This broader group became what is now referred to as The Infrastructure Forum.

The Forum’s interest in infrastructure is the result of several events: •The passage in 1991 of the Inter-modal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) popularly referred to as “ICED TEA” which redirects federal transportation assistance in a $151 billion, six year national program.

•Early indications from the newly elected Clinton Administration that infrastructure

investments would be a key element in their plans to stimulate the economy.

•The recognition that Boston and the metropolitan area had been uniquely shaped by bold investments in infrastructure projects ranging from the filling of the Back Bay to the construction of Route 128 and its emergence as America’s Technology Highway.

Two of the largest current building projects in the country the Committee observed were infrastructure based, the Boston Harbor Clean-up Project and the Central Artery/ Third Harbor Tunnel Project. The Central Artery/Tunnel Project in particular is the result of ambitious transportation planning in the early 70’s. The members of the Infrastructure Forum wondered aloud where 4

were the bold strokes that might guide the next decades? The possibilities of ISTEA seemed inviting.

The Forum sponsored its first general discussion of the benefits and the need to explore new options for infrastructure investments at a well attended meeting of key public officials, business leaders, community interest groups and members of the architectural community. The meeting, held at the Federal Reserve Bank Building, revealed widespread interest in the potential of new infrastructure investments to stimulate the regional economy and better position this area to compete for new business investment. Quality of environment, coupled with the presence of world class institutions and other civic amenities were frequently cited as advantages the Boston region enjoyed when competing for new industries. Strategic infrastructure investment was seen as a way to enhance that advantage.

Although there was general agreement that new investment in infrastructure was a good idea and there was a sense that the areas of the country with the best plans for innovative transportation related infrastructure investments might move to the front of the line for ISTEA funding, we still lacked a physically identifiable focus.

5

Before the Southwest Corridor Park (Photograph courtesy of Peter Vanderwarker)

A key component in the original planning of the extension of I-95 through Boston which was later scrapped in favor of the Southwest Corridor transit and development project was an inner-belt road which would have created a “circumferential” road through parts of Roxbury, the Back Bay Fens and through Cambridge and Somerville. The idea of an inner-belt road was eventually dropped but some clearance and a pattern of dis-investment had already begun to physically mark the potential right-of-way. The possibility of repairing this torn fabric of the City while improving transit connections between the existing radial pattern of transit and commuter lines represented an appealing idea which possessed all of the elements which an innovative infrastructure project would need to include in order to attract ISTEA funding.

With the generous assistance of Wentworth Institute of Technology and Northeastern University, the Forum planned two Charrettes to explore the possibilities of an infrastructure initiative focused in those areas originally targeted as the route for the inner-belt roadway.

The first of the Charrettes was planned as an information gathering session and was held at Wentworth. Over the course of a weekend in June, a lively mixture of planners, architects, interested citizens, public officials, area business persons and representatives from key hospitals and institutions met to articulate their current needs and their goals for the future.

The clear theme which emerged was the recognition that improved circumferential transportation connections would significantly alter transportation patterns, improve employment opportunities, and increase the development potential of numerous vacant and underutilized parcels and buildings in a ring of cities and towns including Cambridge, Somerville, Everett and Chelsea. In Boston, the neighborhoods of South Boston (including Harbor Point), Roxbury, and the Longwood Medical area would be similarly impacted.

A second Charrette was co-sponsored by the BSA and Northeastern in the Fall to generate some specific physical ideas for what was now dubbed “The New Urban Ring”.

specific technologies.

After the Southwest Corridor Park (Photograph courtesy of Peter Vanderwarker)

Currently the Infrastructure Forum’s emphasis is to widely promote the Urban Ring as an important transportation and economic development concept and to build the requisite political support for funding the necessary studies. The presentation boards, models and exhibits generated in the Charrettes have proved to be provocative and useful tools in making the case for The Urban Ring.

Perhaps these are the bold strokes which will guide us into the future.

Interested persons were invited to register and participate; entry was not solely limited to architects and planners. In fact, neighborhood persons, artists, and public agency experts were encouraged to contribute ideas as well as useful background materials and technical advice. The results of the second Charrette ranged from general strategies for the overall Ring to a series of fanciful site specific ideas.

The Charrette results and subsequent press coverage added a new dimension to the concept of a circumferential transit system which was already being studied by the MBTA. The added dimension was the emphasis on a closely integrated study of transportation and land use potential in The Ring without a premature commitment to fixed routes or 6

Essay

Kenneth E. Kruckemeyer, A.I.A., A.S.C.E. Transportation Consultant Lecturer in Civil Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Transportation as a Catalyst for Healthy Communities

Transportation, supportive neighborhoods, and jobs are all linked together. Today, in many inner-city communities, it seems that we have none of these. It has not always been that way, and it need not always be so.

truths of public transportation, and to question the license we give the private automobile. We need to be willing to dream of a better future, and to be willing to make radical changes, in order to realize that dream.

A bit of history

To attack contemporary problems, one could start another round of neighborhood planning; or one could begin a renewed effort to create more jobs. I suggest, however, that we should look first at present day transportation policies, and consider how they might be altered to create a better future.

Transportation can be seen as the key to employment, and thus to successful neighborhoods.

To change the status quo, however, we must be willing to question many present-day 7

I would like to begin by quoting from Rand, McNally’s Handy Guide to Boston, a book my father bought when he first came to Boston in 1909.

No city in the world has a better street car service than Boston, and nowhere can one enjoy a longer ride for a five-cent fare.

Likewise, there is no city where a more liberal system of transfers prevails.

Boston’s rapid transit system is made up of

surface, elevated, tunnel and subway service, splendidly coordinated. There is no difficulty in getting expeditiously transported from one part of Greater Boston to another, and usually at a cost of not more than a single fare.

The spacious open cars used in the summer, the comfortable and equally roomy closed cars used in the winter and stormy seasons, and the large semi-convertible cars run on some of the surface lines, afford a safe and pleasant means of transit.

The books list of attractive routes, considered especially interesting and important, starts with: Dorchester via Grove Hall, Dorchester via Dudley and Meeting House Hill, and Franklin Park.

Also noted in this guide are: the ferry services to Chelsea, East Boston, Lynn, Revere, Winthrop, and Beachmont; the Boston and Northern Electric Railroad System, travelling from Scollay Square to thirty cities and towns, among them Salem, Hamilton, Stoneham and Everett; and a parcel service that, for twenty-five cents would deliver packages; and with two hours notice prior to departure, would pick up luggage, transfer it to any station or terminal, and check it through to your destination.

A city, and a transportation system, that

worked so well is hard to imagine today. The lessons I choose to learn from this Guide include: • Many more people lived closer to where they shopped or worked, and were more safely able to walk or bicycle to where they were going.

• There were precious few private automobiles to interfere with the public mission of speedy, convenient transportation service and deliveries.

• A lot of people were employed to make this system work.

• A five cent fare was pretty much money, perhaps the equivalent of $2.50 today, if one compares the cost of a hotel room or a meal.

• Fares were enough to pay for the service rendered, with some profit to the investors.

A view of the future Based upon some of these lessons from the past, let us try to imagine a worker/service oriented transportation system. Let us dream, for a moment, about the way every citizen of Boston’s inner city neighborhoods might be able to live.

Think about how a transportation system might work for you:

Imagine being able to shop on your way to a clinic appointment, and having the items you bought waiting for you in a secure box at your front door when you return home; your parcels having been brought there on the transportation system and put in the box by a neighborhood delivery person. Imagine making convenient connections between home, work, shopping and school, without the need to find (and perhaps pay for) a place to park near each. And consider the safety and reliability of a transportation system that comes so frequently it seems to wait for you, rather than you waiting for it.

Consider how differently your neighborhood would function: This is a world of front doors, of sidewalks and active and attractive streets; not a world of side entrances, of garages, traffic jams, asphalt lots and enclosed walkways.

Imagine that your neighborhood would encourage the construction of new housing and offices with enough density to support local shops and services, and without the fear that such development would increase traffic and exacerbate parking. More neighbors are a benefit, because, as patrons, they make the transportation system work all that much better. With fewer private cars on the streets, fire trucks and ambulances get to their destination without being bogged down in traffic. Let yourself dream of local streets that are safe to walk along or bicycle on; and 8

of major arteries that are once again desirable places to live; with higher, rather than lower, property values.

Most importantly, think about how this system could put people to work: A higher percentage of each dollar spent on transit is paid to the workers on the system who operate and maintain it, rather than to paying for expensive capital investments and for the interest payments on the loans for such investments. The money you once spent on transportation is now being being used quite differently. Instead of dollars invested in a car, and spent on interest, insurance, and gasoline, the fares you now pay for a seat on this worker/service oriented transportation system puts your money in the hands of neighbors; who, in turn, further contribute to the local economy. For many families the entire cost of a second vehicle, and many of the miles they used to put on the first car for commuting, are now investments in the workers in their own community.

The dividends are yours, too; in safer streets, more viable shops and better services.

What stands in our way?

Critical to the realization of this vision is breaking the supremacy of the private car.

There are, to be sure, many trips that will still 9

be served by automobile. Even with a more effective public transportation system, it will be many years before the spread out, autodependent land-use patterns that have developed over the past fifty years will change to support a more effective and efficient system. We must acknowledge, however, that especially in the city, this exclusive means of transportation serves a select few in our society, at the expense of everyone.

We must be willing to question our present public transportation system if we are to develop a system that works for people in urban neighborhoods.

The present system permits the operation of private mini-bus services; carrying anyone from rental-car customers, to medical students, to long-distance suburban commuters.

Why, then, has it prohibited the creation of a similar service to serve low income workers in inner city neighborhoods? Such a service, sometimes called jitneys, could be much more effective than the current public bus system.

Heavy rail systems, with their large capacity, and high capital costs, are essential on high-volume corridors that serve as trunk lines for a metropolitan system. The better this system is, the better it can substitute for the private automobile. Bigger is not better, however, for neighborhood transportation

systems. Why do we only see big busses on infrequent schedules in neighborhoods?

Public transportation planning and improvements must be accomplished at the feeder system level, as well as on the main lines.

Traffic jams of private cars filling public streets have completely altered our perception of how to create responsible transportation. Public busses and trolleys cannot run reliably because of this traffic, so we have come to think that new public transportation systems need to be in their own right-of-way.

Creating these exclusive corridors is expensive, and may adversely impact neighborhoods in the process. Why do we tolerate a transportation system in which a public resource, the road network established centuries ago, is allowed to be dominated by private vehicles? Those who can afford to drive automobiles are being allowed to destroy the mobility of the rest of the public, including those who are too young, too old, too poor, or unable to drive. As we have seen, this is mobility we once had; and as it has been destroyed, our neighborhoods and our neighbors have been destroyed as well.

Transportation goals for urban neighborhoods For inner-city neighborhoods, a small-scale system, with broad coverage and high fre-

quency, is essential for several reasons. This means lots of small vehicles on many local streets. Convenience and frequency are essential characteristics of a transportation system that will reduce automobile usage.

Frequency and visibility are key to public safety.

Main streets need to have exclusive bus lanes or bus priority so that the public transit system does not get bogged down in traffic.

People need to be able to count on a system.

Reliably following a timetable is essential.

This may well mean displacing cars, but those drivers become more riders, and create a still more efficient system.

If a bus and jitney system can run efficiently without conflict with automobiles, there will be less need for expensive new heavy rail systems. Less money needs to be spent on capital investment, and more will be spent on drivers. This money gets re-invested in the community.

In some cases, the local suburban systems and local inner-city distribution systems can be linked via existing radial highways for a one-seat ride. This further reduces the need for automobile traffic at all, and provides good reverse commute opportunities to suburban job markets. Rubber tires, rather than steel rails, are the key to making these

connections, and will make the conversion of highway lanes from single-occupant to high capacity vehicles possible.

neighborhood vision.

Larger vehicles (big busses, articulated busses or multi-car trollies and trains), with fewer operators, have become synonymous with more efficient transit service. This strategy is appropriate on trunk lines in peak hours, but it is antithetical to efficient neighborhood transportation, and to good neighborhoods.

(It is even counter-productive on main lines in the off-peak. Orange line service would come twice as often in non-rush hour if the MBTA ran two-car trains with a single operator instead of four-car trains with two personnel on board.)

In Boston, the concept of an inner circumferential transit (roughly along the former innerbelt alignment through Roxbury, the Fenway, and Cambridge) has been discussed for more than twenty years. Improving mobility in this portion of our metropolitan area by applying these new principles might yield a transportation system unlike anything we currently know.

We are at a moment in time when many diverse people and organizations are thinking about holistic solutions to our transportation and societal problems. People who are transportation outsiders are becoming more active, and through the new federal legislation known as ISTEA (the Inter-modal Surface Transportation and Efficiency Act), funding is now possible for a much broader transportation strategy, that includes bicycles and pedestrians, as well as public transportation and roads. We cannot expect the existing system to change from within. It will take action on the part of citizens to realize a

A place to start

To put this kind of system in place as a new urban ring around Boston means establishing a path, or several paths, for non-private vehicles: probably a variety of busses, ambulances, perhaps jitneys, some types of delivery vehicles, and perhaps, eventually, light rail vehicles. Some of the alignment could be created through conversion of existing streets (and as the need for a car diminishes, there could be more streets available.) In other cases, at intersections with surface radials or at cross-streets, a new tunnel may be called for. Existing radials—transit, rails and highways—need good connections (stations and interchanges) with this new urban ring.

This system can provide jobs, as well as access to jobs. If we look at the whole circle, a host of communities—East Boston, 10

Chelsea, Everett, Charlestown, Cambridge, Brookline, the Fenway, Roxbury, South Boston can provide the workers. This system itself can provide training, as well as access to educational institutions—scores of colleges, universities and schools can benefit and contribute. The hospitals, clinics, and bio-tech industries can have better access, and be more wholly integrated into their communities. The neighborhoods will become a major contributor to the health of the city.

This new urban ring could be the first step in the establishment of a complete worker/ service based transportation system that would, in turn, re-establish Boston as a supportive and beautiful city for all of its citizens.

11

Essay

Alex Krieger, A.I.A. Principal, Chan Krieger and Associates Professor of Architecture and Urban Design Director, Urban Design Program

Ring Dreaming and Making

Cities which develop along radial lines often dream of rings. And on at least half-a-dozen occasions, with various degrees of intensity and success, Bostonians have imagined and embarked upon constructing a ring. The New Urban Ring must be understood in relationship to this tradition, not so as to diminish its originality as an idea, but precisely to reinforce this current initiative’s potency; perhaps even to underscore the urgency to move ahead.

The predicament of Boston’s physical morphology has been evident for a long time.

Many in the region can describe those moments of frustrated awareness when it becomes apparent that to get from point A to point B one needs to traverse the two long sides of an isosceles triangle. Efficient com-

muting time is not the only casualty of such an urban layout. A concomitant absence of orientation, along with social and economic dislocation are also characteristic.

Of course, the reciprocal experience involves becoming aware, quite accidentally and usually as a result of being temporarily lost, that a particular combination of multiple turns connects two parts of the city formerly assumed to be remote. So, the Bostonian’s search for rings is always partially about discovery, about revising mental maps, and about social connections; social and cultural no less than physical.

The earliest and most famous ring to be conceptualized – and amazingly, to be realized essentially as planned – was Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace. Transportation and 12

economic opportunity, while important to Olmsted, were less paramount than the need for city dwellers to encounter aspects of nature in their daily lives. Amidst the street and tumult of the late-nineteenth century city, expansive places of repose were needed for spiritual well-being. In their parks and parkways Bostonians would shed their competitive instincts and even, perhaps, their class distinctions. Olmsted’s green lungs and arteries were expected to re-civilize an uncivil urban landscape and foster a higher citizenship. So, this very first ring had, as one of its goals, the aim of bringing people and communities together.

By the 1880’s as the Emerald Necklace was taking root, a campaign for conceiving it as but the inner ring of a much more comprehensive regional open space network, began to gather momentum. Charles Eliot, Olmsted’s most able disciple, and Sylvester Baxter, a journalist and editor, initiated this less well known but even more radical plan for encircling Boston a second time. After twenty years, by the turn of the century, an impressive 15,000 acres of what they termed “public reservations” had been assembled, including 30 miles of river frontage, 10 miles of ocean shoreline, and 22 miles of right-ofway for parkways.

Along with the ring of open space Eliot and 13

Baxter were calling for metropolitan cooperation. Boston and its thirty-eight neighboring communities, they argued, had better begin to collaborate on matters such as open space preservation, arterial roads, transportation, sewerage, other public works, and even social services. Their visible ring of reservations for public use was to be emblematic of a new political ring. With a promising start, if ultimately an unfulfilled vision, their campaign led to the establishment of the Metropolitan District Commission.

On the heels of such initial success at urban ring-making, came two other efforts, both involving Arthur A. Shurtleff, one of Boston’s greatest planners and ring dreamers. Both schemes emphasized circumferential circulation, directly addressing the absent rims for the radiating “spokes of the hub”.

Paradoxically, these were far less successful, at least in terms of implementation. It was perhaps this narrower focus on transportation alone which may have limited appeal to the public’s imagination back in 1907-09.

The first of these visions of circumferentials was produced by the spiritual ancestor to the Boston Society of Architects current Infrastructure Forum, the Committee on Municipal Improvements. In 1907 the group published a remarkable little pamphlet on urban design. It was full of practical and

visionary ideas for modernizing the city, and had (for the first decade of the twentieth century) a startling mission: “consolidate the population by filling the gaps in the city plan; avoid congestion by enlarging the business district; and keep within the city limits the prosperous and educated class that now goes to the suburbs.” 1 Reading this passage in 1994, one’s mind wavers between a sense of comfort that today’s urban problems are not ours alone, and a despondence at how little progress has been made after eighty-four years of similar expectations. Excitement and humility also accompany the discovery in the report of a diagram proposing an inner and outer boulevard which more or less geographically bracket the alignment of The New Urban Ring. (fig. 1) Actually, the outer boulevard then proposed – aiming directly from Fields Corner in Dorchester, through the then barely present Longwood medical Area, straight through Brookline Village and Allston Landing, and into Harvard Square – is more stunning in its social and economic connective intentions than the ring presently proposed.

There is no evidence that either boulevard

received much subsequent planning attention except in Shurtleff’s own 1909 plan; a spectacular regional cob-web of circumferential roads produced for the Joint Board on Metropolitan Improvements. (figs. 2 & 3) His scheme was simple and logical: to widen the radial roads emanating from the core and to intersect them at regular intervals with a series of concentric ring roads. He showed that the basis for a circumferential system already existed in many disconnected segments of local roads. Connecting these segments while also improving the radials, he argued, was important to allow Boston to grow further. His two maps indicate the pieces necessary to complete both systems.

A half-century prior to the construction of Routes 128 and 495, their necessity had been anticipated.

Shurtleff was simply ahead of his time, and had to wait for another occasion and a younger generation to recognize his ideas.

Powerful civic ideas, especially as prophetic as his, tend to live on.

Twenty years after Shurtleff’s initial plan the Bay Circuit was unveiled by a gubernatorial commission on which he, too, had served.

The advocates were mainly the successors of the Eliot/ Baxter metropolitan park system coalition. The idea was to move ahead in connecting the public reservations and parks already assembled, and to do so in part by

128 had already been constructed and two others, Route 495 and the infamous Inner Belt, were on the drawing boards. State and federal transportation bureaucracies had taken over the role of ring proponents from lone visionaries such as Olmsted, Eliot, and Shurtleff.

fig. 1 Diagram showing location of Proposed Inner and Outer Boulevards/ BSA 1907 constructing a new parkway for pleasure use. Unfortunately the onset of the Great Depression negated the appropriation of any funds towards this endeavor. The idea languished but persisted.

In 1956, the same year as the Interstate Highway Act assured seemingly unlimited funds for highway construction, Governor Christian Herter signed a law calling for the implementation of the old Bay Circuit. By that time, however, a different kind of ring, Route

The 1948 Master Highway Plan issued by Massachusetts Department of Public Works had all by itself proposed three rings for the region. Route 128 was realized expeditiously to become “America’s Technology Highway”.

As a catalyst for suburban expansion and economic growth it is surely the region’s most important twentieth century ring. Route 495 was more ghostly sketched out back in 1948, though within a generation had become necessary to alleviate congestion on Route 128and to support additional suburban and economic growth. It was the third highway ring, the innermost, that would eventually run into trouble, but leave a strong trace for the present New Urban Ring to follow. (It might, however, be said of the ‘48 Highway Plan that two out of three isn’t bad, as far as urban ring building goes.)

In 1970, after a two-decade long debate which would forever alter transportation planning in the region, the Inner Belt was finally abandoned by Governor Sargent, although land-taking and clearance were well under 14

for other purposes, namely public transportation. Halting this highway and turning to the expansion of the MBTA brought Boston planning back to the time when transportation engineering was a means of civic improvement rather than of urban desolation.

Of course a fair amount of ground-zero had already been created along the Inner belt corridor.

fig. 2 Diagram showing Existing and Proposed Radial Thoroughfares/ A. Shurtleff 1909

fig. 3 Diagram showing Existing and Proposed Circumferential Thoroughfares/ A. Shurtleff 1909

way. This elevated highway would have extended the Central Artery around the core, following a route through the South End and Roxbury, past Northeastern University and the Museum of Fine Arts, through the Fens, over the Boston University Bridge, through Cambridge between Central and Kendall Squares, and into Somerville where it would intercept I-93. For those too young to recall the seriousness of this plan there remains the evidence of a pair of ramps flying into space off I-93 just past Bunker Community

College; still ready to receive the northwestern arc of the doomed Inner Belt.

15

During the years of debate few of the Inner Belt’s advocates or opponents recalled the virtually identical alignment of the 1907 boulevard. Treading then through the sparsely settled areas would have been a far less destructive task. Stopping the Inner Belt marked a watershed: it was the first time that a federally funded highway project was halted in progress with the funding retained

Through the 1970’s and 1980’s the city awaited the circumferential transit line that was promised as a substitute for the Inner Belt. But the reconstruction of the MBTA’s Orange Line and the extensions along the Red Line had first priority. We waited as parts of the corridor were redesigned (Melnea Cass Boulevard and the Ruggles Station area), parts thrived (the Longwood Medical Area), and most others lay dormant.

Regional attention shifted to the construction of the third harbor tunnel, and to correcting another consequence of the 1948 Master Highway Plan, depressing the central Artery.

With the fading glow of the 1980’s real estate boom pessimists were overheard referring to the old Inner Belt corridor as the “Rust Belt”, while optimists began conceptualizing a biomedical zone; a “Bio-Belt”. It was time to conceptualize a New Urban Ring.

Civic ideas persist. As recently as 1984 the Commonwealth earmarked over $3,000,000

towards the continuation of the Bay Circuit, though how this circuit ought to be interpreted today is less than clear. During the centennial celebrations surrounding the individual components of the Emerald Necklace there was talk of completing an important missing strand, Columbia Road, envisioned

by Olmsted as a “pleasureway” by which the park system would reach the harbor and the sea. Perhaps its completion would alter – if only symbolically – what citizenship has yet to accomplish: a sense of connection between three sometimes reluctant neighbors along the Emerald Necklace; the communities of Roxbury, Dorchester, and South Boston. 2 And Mayor Menino’s recent commitment to revitalize Blue Hill Avenue has far less to do with its origins as a parkway connecting Olmsted’s and Eliot’s parks systems, and far more to do with restoring economic opportunity for the neighborhoods along it.

Visions do persist. Each generation adapts them to champion contemporaneous causes.

At rare moments in a city’s history a persistent idea and a contemporary cause appear to join seamlessly. Significant progress can then be made to advance both the old idea and the new cause. Let us hope, as economic development, transportation policy, and neighborhood building achieve equilibrium in planning again; that the last decade of the twentieth century will be the moment for the

New (and old) Urban Ring.

Notes

1.Report to the Boston Society of Architects on Municipal Improvements (Boston, 1907) p.8 2.Argued by the author and Anne Mackin in a Boston Globe essay, October 8, 1988

16

Essay

George Thrush, A.I.A. Assistant Professor of Architecture Head, Architecture Concentration Northeastern University

The Need for a Center: Politics, Morphology, and the Ring

The New Urban Ring

17

During meetings of the Boston Society of Architects’ Infrastructure Forum last year, there was a good deal of debate surrounding the appropriate title for what came to be known as The New Urban Ring. Before finally settling on the ring as the best metaphor for our proposal, we discussed loops, belts, wheels, hoops, crowns, and other circular forms . It was a struggle because The New Urban Ring proposal is an attempt to address many different problems at once.

We knew that the idea was for something “urban”– as in pedestrians, public space, and public transportation– as opposed to “suburban”. We were also set on “new”, so as to distinguish this proposal from its many illustrious predecessors. (see Alex Krieger’s previous essay, Ring Dreaming and Making).

But the question of the “ring” was critical because it would serve as the guiding meta-

stants has been the primacy of its downtown head, or the original end of the Shawmut Peninsula. The bulbous shape of that head, at the end of the long thin neck that connected it to Roxbury, made it a natural center for what would develop as a primarily radially structured city.

In the middle of this natural center lie the city’s two dominant public spaces: the Boston Common and City Hall Plaza. The Common carries with it the history of participatory democracy in America through its role as the most important shared space in this old city. It has served as shared grazing land for Boston’s earlier residents as well as the site of major political rallies.

The gold dome of the Massachusetts State House announces it for miles around. The State House is also, of course, the center of

regional government. If the Common and the State House form one part of this center, City Hall Plaza forms the other. City Hall Plaza has none of the Common’s illustrious history.

It was not designed until 1961, but it serves nonetheless as a major civic space within the city, in addition to serving as the home of local government.

What is remarkable about these two public spaces is not only that they are directly tied to both local and regional sources of political power, but also the degree to which they are explicitly connected to the radial streets which emanate from Boston’s center. Each of these important arteries, which ultimately serve to divide the city’s neighborhoods into discrete pie-shaped enclaves, has as its source one of these two politically charged spaces. There is a direct connection, then, between the political center of this radially ordered city, and the radial lines that divide and marginalize its neighborhoods. It is to this unusual political/ morphological condition that The New Urban Ring can most uniquely address itself.

In addition to proposing serious improvements to the regions public transportation infrastructure, The New Urban Ring also proposes a strategy to engage that most vexing of contemporary dilemmas: how does a society relate its “center” to its “margins” ? We hardly need to be reminded of the enormous scope of this problem. We hear about it all the time. Whether the topic is

Abandoned Rail Yards in South Boston (Photograph courtesy of Peter Vanderwarker)

the balancing of a university’s freshman reading list between contemporary “multi-cultural authors” and the work of “dead, white, European males”, or proportional voting strategies designed to adequately represent ethnic and racial minorities in a white-dominated society, or of the relationship of free speech to hate speech on college campuses– it is hard to find a heated discussion today that does not engage this relationship between the “center” and the “margins”; between parts and the whole.

There are, of course, metaphors for this issue as well. They are the social and cultural metaphors that describe much of our political and cultural life. The two dominant metaphors, ones that most closely approximate this question of the “center” and the “margins”, are The Melting Pot and The Quilt.

The melting pot is the metaphor of choice for much of American society. It presupposes a single cultural center towards which all subsequent arrivals gravitate as part of their “assimilation” into American society. It is understood to represent a single language and a single culture, and is dominated by the majority beliefs on all issues. Those beliefs may change slowly by additions to the mix, but that they remain majority views is seen as essential. In this model, the part is totally subjugated to the whole.

The quilt, (or its variant, the “richly textured mosaic”, courtesy of David Dinkins’ 1989 mayoral campaign slogan for New York City), is an alternative to the melting pot and is its diametric opposite in many respects. It owes its alternative appeal to several sources, but it is also distinct in important formal and social ways. The quilt is made up of highly individualized squares without an overall center. More squares can be added whenever desired, and they too can retain their own uniqueness. And, of course, the quilt has become a powerful and touching symbol of the American Gay community’s response to the AIDS epidemic. By weaving together images from the lives of many individual gay citizens who have lost their lives to AIDS, many previously seen as “marginal” from the melting pot perspective have gained an enormous measure of collective dignity not otherwise available to them. The very “otherness” of its individual patches is what lends 18

the quilt metaphor its strength. In the quilt, the whole is fully subjugated to the part.

Both the melting pot and the quilt are extreme views. Either the whole or the part is seen as winning at the expense of the other.

But like their urban design analogues, the radial and gridiron city plans, these metaphors seldom occur without compromise.

And Boston is in an interesting position to do more than compromise. Because of its unique relationship of political center to radial divisions, Boston can invent a new use for the ring form that addresses the problem of metaphor. Other cities have rings (Vienna, Amsterdam and Moscow, among many others), but Boston can use its ring to profound social effect.

The New Urban Ring strikes a balance between melting pot and quilt, between radial plan and gridiron, and between the primacy of the “center” and that of the “margins”. Its adoption would offer a number of benefits in addition to the transportation connections already described in this catalogue. First, rather than limit the hierarchical authority conferred by the city’s urban form to the central core, The New Urban Ring would expand the core by designating the ring as civic space. This would afford a measure of civic space to each community along the ring. The metropolitan area would have a ring of sites for developing not only transportation infrastructure, but also the infrastructure of public life, whether that be 19

health care facilities, municipal offices, parks, recreation facilities, schools, universities, or some version of metropolitan government.

This expansion of the core would also make Boston’s center relate more meaningfully to the scale of the region. One could reach a layer of “downtown” merely by reaching the ring. Maybe Boston could even develop a “mid-town” on the ring.

The New Urban Ring could also go a long

way towards neutralizing one of the false dichotomies of Boston politics: downtown versus the neighborhoods. Generations of Boston politicians have been able to pit these two parts of the city against one another because their fates have been effectively separated by the city’s geography. With the exception of policies like the city’s “linkage” program of the 1980’s, what was good for downtown was not necessarily good for Roxbury, South Boston, or Allston. The two

Boston’s City Hall Plaza

Massachusetts State House

(Photograph courtesy of Peter Vanderwarker)

(Photograph courtesy of Peter Vanderwarker)

The City’s Edge and its Civic Core: the Boston Common and City Hall

Connections to the Civic Core: Radial Streets and the Emerald

The New Urban Ring: Urbanity enlarged

have different constituencies. Like most cities, Boston’s downtown constituents actually live in the suburbs, while their poorer counterparts live in the city’s neighborhoods.

metropolitan government that could save the economic vitality of our cities.

urban life. The New Urban Ring would be a

The Infrastructure Forum has been wisely touting The New Urban Ring as a low-cost venture. And indeed, from a capital investment standpoint it is certainly that. Unlike purely transportation oriented visions, it viability should not depend solely on ridership figures or other traditionally quantitative justification. The ring could be started with things as simple as specially painted dedicated bus lines, double rows of trees, and other simple improvements. But the low initial implementation cost of The New Urban Ring should not deceive us into thinking that it is unimportant.From those initial expenditures (The burden for which might be split between government and private institutions) it could grow into the armature for a re-invention of

revolution– not a partisan revolution of “big

The New Urban Ring could address this problem by reversing the national trend of public subsidy for suburban living. The separation of Boston’s downtown economic class from their urban neighbors was facilitated, as it was in other American cities, by the strands of the interstate highway system that grew in the 1950’s. The ring could be the first of several that would serve to reconnect some of those separate strands and begin to re-form them into more interdependent communities. As the first of what might become a series of rings, it could ultimately reunite urban and suburban citizens in a

Graphics by Rusty Walker

government” or “privatization”; or even one

of rubber tires or mono-rails – but a revolu-

tion of civic life in America.

20

The Melting Pot

The Quilt

The New Urban Ring phor of the whole idea.

A ring conjures up neither the perfunctory images of loops and belts, nor the regal images of the crown. A ring is simple. A ring is something that many people can grab onto at once. But it also something that implies a center. Indeed, the acknowledgement and reinforcement of the “center” may be The New Urban Ring’s most salutary benefit. It presents the opportunity to unite the disparate threads of our multi-cultural society in a way that allows both its rich fabric and overall structure to remain recognizable. It does so by uniting many things: radial traffic systems, development opportunities, and health and educational institutions. But by creating a structure through which different communities, including those that may want to remain different, can be meaningfully woven into the fabric of shared life, The New Urban Ring offers Boston a profound civic opportunity.

The roots of this opportunity lie in Boston’s morphology. Among the city’s historical con-

21

Lajos Heder Hubert Murray David Sims George Thrush

Site Programs

In June of 1993, members of The Boston Society of Architects Infrastructure Forum, the regional design community, educational and arts institutions, and several interested neighborhood and community groups gathered at Wentworth Institute of Technology for a preliminary, “information gathering charrette�. The objective of this meeting was to present the notion of The New Urban Ring to the many interested parties so that what was still then an interesting conceptual framework might become a means for addressing real urban problems and civic concerns. The event offered the opportunity for designers to listen to many specific concerns regarding open space, traffic, parking, and access to various parts of the city by different neighborhoods and communities. This first charrette was spread over two days, June 5 & 6, 1993.

The BSA Infrastructure Forum divided The

New Urban Ring into three distinct parts to facilitate more detailed study of each part.

Groups were formed to gather information on the following: regional issues affecting the entire ring, sites to the north of the Charles River (Cambridge, Somerville, Everett, Chelsea, and East Boston), and those to the south(Longwood Medical Area, Brookline, Fenway, Northeastern, Mission Hill, Roxbury, South End, and South Boston). What follows is the programming that resulted from this event.

22

Lajos Heder

The Entire Ring

The Entire Ring Group will address system wide issues of the Ring development.

Working teams within the group may choose to work on one or more of the following menu of program elements and are, of course, welcome to add more - the product of each team should be strong and imaginative statements related to the chosen program elements, not attempts at comprehensive schematic plans of all aspects of the entire Ring: 1. The transit system - conceptual issues (review ‘89 TAMS report): • Types of transit that may be appropriate (traditional or new technology); • Type of service pattern, ridership, origins and destinations throughout the city; • Patterns of stops, related pedestrian or secondary transit collection and distribution.

23

Site Programs

2. Major prototypical patterns of urban design integration - can interact with site specific teams in other groups for testing prototypes: • Dense institutional areas; • Established neighborhood centers: • Large underdeveloped areas.

3. Prototype physical connection/ integration details: • Transit stops to three types of environments listed above; • Existing and future developments vs. passing transit lines; • The Water Ring - Water crossing and water transport opportunities.

4. Prototype programs that may be dispersed/connected along the Ring and their implication for city development: •The Teach Ring - Programs linking high schools, colleges, universities, teaching hospitals, job training, internships; • The Health Ring - hospital outpatient programs, service delivery to communities, public health and preventive medicine, drug related programs; • The Money Ring - Business enterprises, location, distribution, employee access, marketing and advertising, benefits of the airport connection, new products related to the Ring;

5. Short range action plans that may grow into long range development of the Ring: • Coordination and extension of existing special bus services; • Bus stops/shelters as small focal points in communities - information, vending, art events; • Quick start versions of the programs listed above; • The Rites of Ring - special events, festivals, celebrations and art installations focused on the Ring .

6. Covenants of the Ring - clients for the Ring who will benefit from value added by the Ring, agreements, funding programs, phased growth implementation steps required.

7. Imaging the Ring - spreading the ideas, making them resonant, attracting an increasing number and variety of supporters. a. The Transportation Web : Explore the possible route connections between outer neighborhoods characterized by “in-across-and out” movements. Make a web out of the spider. Examine or invent new modes, new prototypes- personal Rapid Transit (PRT), taxi, jitney, light rail. Examine the civic and architectural possibilities of the stations, bus stops, jetties, bridges, viaducts.

What are the urban and environmental consequences ?

b. The Health Ring: Take this slice through the city and explore how transportation could link primary and secondary health services to the inner city population. The best hospitals in the country are linked to the best universities and yet the infant mortality rate in adjacent neighborhoods is one of the highest in the country. Can connections be made to bridge the gap ? If physical access is part of the problem, would proximity assist in breaking down institutional inaccessibility ? c. The Green Ring: Take this slice through the city and explore how transportation could link working and residential communities to recreational areas- parks, playing fields, water sports, gymnasia, tennis courts, a stadium. d. The Think Ring: Take a slice through the city and explore how transportation can link colleges, universities, and other schools. The Ring covers every educational institution from neighborhood elementary to the best colleges in the nation. Where are the physical and institutional connections to be made ? e. The Water Ring: Think how to develop the water links in the Ring to make the connection between South Boston and Logan, between East Boston, Chelsea, Charlestown, across the Charles. Water shuttles, bridges, connecting to land transit.

f. Ring City: Develop high density residential, commercial, industrial, recreational facilities such as village centers, beads on the transportation necklace.

g. Covenants of the Ring: What agreements, contracts and levels of understanding between institutions, municipalities, permitting authorities can be gathered and fostered by the Ring ? h. Ringing in The New Urban Ring: The ultimate issue is who wants the Ring. Who does it work for and who is prepared to work for it- and who pays and how?

This team could identify clients and constituents and explore ways of advocating the themes through advertising, fliers, posters, etc. Institutional and corporate networks to make these things happen are the essence of future action.

24

George Thrush, A.I.A. Head, Architecture Northeastern University

Site Programs

Site 1/ Description: This intersection serves as a “gateway” to the Longwood Medical Area. It has tremendous possibilities in terms of replacing extensive parking facilities with a transit stop connecting the area to remote parking and other modes of public transportation. There also exists the possibility of extending the street life of Boylston and Brookline Avenue across the Fenway to create greater safety for pedestrians in the Medical Area.

South of the Charles River

Site 1/ Program: Transit Stop and convenience shopping or cafés.

Creation of an identity for the Longwood area.

Integration of the Sears Building into the area.

Reinforce park edge, and circulation route to Ruggles Street.

Replacement of planned parking structures with other uses.

Suggest remainder of Ring route to Charles River.

1 2

25

3

4

Site 2/ Description: This site is already much studied and, in parts, built or under construction. However, there remains much to do. The character of the area remains undefined. The Registry Building is nearly completed, and there are concrete plans for a new Police headquarters

and proposals under study for a shopping center on Parcel P-3, a track facility adjacent to Roxbury Community College, and the widening of Ruggles Street and extension of the Transit reservation. The balance between pedestrians, automobiles, retail, and public spaces is the critical issue here. Also, with $50 million in government funds to improve the public housing on Mission Hill, there is a tremendous opportunity to improve the relationship of Ruggles Center with Ruggles Street.

Site 2/ Program: Definition of pedestrian circulation to and from Roxbury and Ruggles Station to public and retail spaces.Redefine Housing and retail arrangements on parcel P-3 area, up towards the vocational school, and near the proposed Police HQ. Separation of local and through traffic for pedestrian safety.

Integration of Ring transit into the inter-modal Ruggles Station.

Site 3/ Description: This intersection serves as a”gateway” to the Roxbury neighborhood. In addition this may become another inter-modal point where the Ring system crosses the proposed Washington Street Replacement Service, an LRV system designed to re-invigorate Washington Street’s commercial life. This site also offers the chance to describe what

the edge of Melnea Cass might be like. How can transportation, retail, and housing tie this area together ?

Site 3/ Program: Transit Stop and Retail at intersection Mixed-use housing and retail along Melnea Cass Light Industry towards New Market area, but with a viable pedestrian edge towards Melnea Cass.

Parking lots on interior of blocks to retain street edges.

Break down “super-blocks” with re-integrated street patterns.

Light Industry at New Market.

Mixed use retail and commercial along Melnea Cass.

Delineation of Housing and industrial areas on either side of Melnea Cass.

“Gateway” at entrance to Melnea Cass.

Site 4/ Description: This intersection is among the most complex in the city. If The New Urban Ring is to succeed, however, the Mass. Highway Department proposal for the connection between I-93 and Mass. Ave. must support a new urban center here.Such a pedestrian oriented node should probably not run directly into the expressway on/ off ramp.Also, there is the question of a gateway to New Market and Melnea Cass, and how the light industry that the area needs for jobs might best be integrated into the community.

Site 4/ Program 26

David Sims Cambridge, MA

North of the Charles River

7 6

5

27

Site Programs

Site 5/ Fort Washington (Cambridge) Description: An area straddled by the Grand Junction Railroad has been designated for emerging technology businesses and university use.

Over the winding Charles River, the skyline view of Boston is reflective of the opportunity to increase links to Cambridge. At the corner of Brookline Street is an historic Ford Motor Company plant that is currently being renovated for biotechnology research and development. Across Massachusetts Avenue, a new biology building is under construction for M.I.T. Program: Provide access to recreational activities along the Charles River.

Connect workers and students to Kendall Square and the Red Line.

Offer options for existing grade crossing at Massachusetts Avenue.

Suggests access for nearby neighborhoods and retail areas.

Noteworthy: Forest City Development- University Park (M.I.T.) City of Cambridge- Central Square Revitalization Stop “n Shop- Grocery store expansion (Memorial drive)

Site 6/ Riverview (Somerville & Charlestown) Description: An under-developed area along the Mystic and Malden rivers is traversed by two commuter rail lines. The busy intersection at Sullivan Square lacks aesthetic appeal.

Nearby Union Square offers internationally diverse restaurants and food shops.

Program: Provide links to industrial development in East Cambridge (Barney Street) and Charlestown (Navy Yard) Integrate circumferential transportation with commuter rail lines.

Clean up waterfront area and adapt for mixed -use development.

Noteworthy: Boston Redevelopment AuthorityCharlestown Navy Yard MBTA- Lechmere Station, Green Line extension Site 7/ Parkway (Everett) Description: Across the Mystic River, a heavy industrial area exists apart from a large residential area. A major crosstown roadway suffers from traffic congestion.

Program: Develop an alternative to reduce automobile traffic.

Provide area residents with connections to the metropolitan area.

Clean up waterfront area and adapt for mixed-use development.

Noteworthy: MBTA- Wellington Circle

Site 8/ Broadway (Chelsea) Description: An active urban enclave persists despite an array of economic and political turmoil. Treelined avenues and a wide variety of shops

8 9

attract pedestrian traffic by day that is diminished by security concerns at night. A commuter rail line and freight railway converge and bisect the city.

Program: Improve access for local residents to education and employment opportunities.

Restore Chelsea Square fountain and improve lighting.

Integrate circumferential transportation with rail lines.

Noteworthy: Receivership- Public Schools and City Government Chelsea Naval Hospital- Admirals Hill Development

Noteworthy: Massport- Piers Park, Boston Marina Central Artery Project- Third Harbor Tunnel

Site 9/ Waterfront (East Boston) Description: Derelict piers with dramatic views of downtown Boston across the harbor offer little benefit to area residents. An abandoned railway runs past piers currently being developed. A large amount of through traffic will be re-directed by the Third Harbor Tunnel.

Program: Coordinate waterfront development to become part of the local community.

Improve access to Charlestown and Cambridge, North End and Downtown, and Back Bay and South Boston.

Integrate multi-modal transportation (auto, bus, subway, air, boat) 28

Selected Projects

M. David Lee and Constance McMillan Stull and Lee, Inc. and BSA Infrastructure Forum Conceptions of “The Ring” These boards capture some of the many arguments for connections along the ring.

They cite opportunities for linking existing resources for health care and research, education, arts, recreation, parks… and transportation.

Photography by Craig Weiss

29

Kenneth E. Kruckemeyer Transportation Consultant Boston, MA

Hubert Murray Wallace Floyd Associates Boston, MA 30

Selected Projects

Parts of “The Ring�

These boards address one of the most critical transitional tasks associated with the ring: How do we go about developing an urban attitude towards these new nodes that result from the intersection of the existing radial streets and the ring ?

Photography by Craig Weiss

Lajos Heder Harries / Heder Collaborative Cambridge, MA 31

Wellington Reiter Reiter & Reiter Architects Newton, MA

Specific Sites: Site 4 Melnea Cass, I-93, Massachusetts Avenue and Boston City Hospital

Mark Schatz Schwartz/ Silver Architects Boston, MA Nader Tehrani Machado Silvetti Associates Boston, MA George Thrush George Thrush Design Ipswich, MA

This project gives an actual view of what such a node might actually look like. This proposal, for a commuter parking facility and transit stop on the north side of the intersection of Melnea Cass and Massachusetts Avenue, also proposes a truck stop and market for the south side of the intersection.

The existing round brick building is re-used as part of this new gateway to the city. Such re-use could characterize much The New Urban Rings development, and distinguish it from the more destructive Urban Renewal models of the past.

32

Charrette Participants

M. David Lee, FAIA Curtis Davis George Thrush, AIA Antonio DiMambro, AIA Lajos Heder David Dixon Kenneth Kruckemeyer, Catherine Donaher AIA Daniel P. Donovan Hubert Murray, AIA Gov. Michael S. Dukakis Claire Barrett Ann Donner Constance McMillan Richard Easler Charles Redmon Thomas W. Ennis, ASLA Mil Abella David Eppstein Mary-Ann Agresti John Fisher K.E. Alexander Terry Fraser-Reid Kim Anderson David Freed George Bailich, AIA Paula Gardner Jonathan Austin Richard Garver Joseph Barretta Marvin Gilmore Barbara Barros Astrid Glynn James Barrows Mags Harries Chet Bartels June Hatfield Scott Belvin Rudman J. Ham Joe Beggan Sonia Hamel Roger Boothe, AIA Sarah Hamilton Silke Branelle Ann Hershfang Joan Brigham Patrick Hickox, AIA Kelley Brown Beverly Johnson Ed Burke Michael Jolliffe Peter Calcaterra Andrew Karaliolios Darcy Carbone Victor Karen, AIA Thomas V. Clasby Bob Kaye Dennis Carlone Tom Keady David Carlson Stephen Kelley Paul Chan Mohammed I. Khan Matthew Coogan Larry Koff Bill Coughlin Jim Kostras Robert L. Culver Walter Kouyoumian Christian Dagg Shirley Kressel Chris Dame Ann Kruckemeyer Wayne Davis Bill Kuttner 33

Acknowledgements

Steve Landau Matthew Larue Alexandra Lee Doug Lee Garrett Lee Alan Lewis John Lucey Jeanne Levesque Jim Lydon Bruce MacIntyre Doug Marshall James May Maria McKnight Ferdinando Micale Jennifer Medeiros Tom Nally Jack Parker Richard Pendleton Kathryn Pirth William Pressley Jeanne Reisman Wellington Reiter Karen Routt Fred Salvucci Mark Schatz Elizabeth Schave Hannah Schecter Peter Serenyi Eswaran Selvarajah Richard Shea Kairos Shen David Sims Alison Smith Scott Smith Peter Smith, AIA Mary Smith Bridget Smyth Robert Snowber

Heidi Sokol Barbara Stabin Jeanne Strain Susan Strelec Robert Sturgis, FAIA Rob Tassarini Nader Tehrani Basil Tommy Fredericka Veikley Jeff Verrault Bob Walsh Pam Wessling Ro Whittington Maura Zlody Anatole Zukerman

To acknowledge all of those who helped to bring this idea forward would be impossible.

As we have seen in this catalogue many of those to whom the notion of the ring first occurred are long dead, and many others continue to toil in relative obscurity. But I can thank those with whom I have worked closely on this project, and without whose help and guidance, none of this would have been possible.

David Lee deserves tremendous credit for having both the foresight and the ability to draw together the large and disparate group that is The Infrastructure Forum. The very idea of making decisions about public infrastructure that consciously address a variety of criteria ranging from the technical and economic to the political and aesthetic is an accomplishment in itself. Maintenance of these complex objectives will require perseverance on the part of all of us.

The Infrastructure Forum and many others at the Boston Society of Architects have been the core of The New Urban Ring from the beginning. Among those who dedicated a tremendous amount of effort to this project are: Hubert Murray, Lajos Heder, Ken Kruckemeyer, Chuck Redmon, Connie McMillan, Claire Barrett, Mary Ann Agresti, George Bailich, Richard Shea, David Sims, Tom Nally, Dick Garver, Antonio DiMambro,

Steve Landau, Bill Kuttner, Tom Ennis,K.E. Alexander, Peter Calcaterra, Curtis Davis, Dick Easler, Larry Koff,Basil Tommy, Ann Donner, Larry Bluestone, and Bob Walsh.

Thanks also to the following Wentorth Students for their help and for an excellent ring model: Chester Bartels, Scott Belvin, Andrew Karaliolios, David Lucibello, Jeff Sawyer, Ron Thurber, and especially Jennifer Medeiros. From the BSA: Richard Fitzgerald, Alexandra Lee, Peter Smith, Norris Strawbridge, Robert Sturgis all deserve thanks. It is evidence of the scope and strength of this idea that so many would volunteer so much time to it.

The Boston-Fenway Program, a consortium of arts and educational institutions along Huntington Avenue headed by Jim Lydon, has also consistently supported The New Urban Ring project. As a private planning agency, it offers evidence that such an endeavor need not be undertaken solely by the public sector.

Finally, none of the specific events associated with The New Urban Ring would have been possible without the support of a wide range of administrators, faculty, students, and staff from Northeastern University. The Urban Design Charrette, the accompanying reception and exhibition, this catalogue, and the related upcoming exhibition on trans-

portation and urban design, entitled The Boston Region: From Here to There, are all possible because of extensive support from the University. Though many have been very supportive, none has been more instrumental in making sure that these efforts were funded than Robert L. Culver, Senior Vice President & Treasurer of the University. For this ongoing support, he has my heartfelt thanks. Also, despite difficult schedules, all of the following administration and staff have made major contributions along the way: John A. Curry, President; John A. Martin, Vice President; Cathy McCarron, Bill Corrigan, Maryann Cimino, Shelly Centeio, Dave Sheehan, Mike Vigna, Suzanne Leidel, and Hannah Schecter.

Mary Breslauer, Director of University Communications; and her staff, Janet Hookailo and especially Terry Yanulavich were outstanding in gaining media visibility for our efforts.

Fellow Art and Architecture Department Faculty members, staff, and students have also given time to help with this project and its seemingly endless list of tasks; they include: Peter Serenyi, Professor of Architecture and Chair, Department of Art and Architecture; Mardges Bacon, Professor of Architecture; Monica Ponce de Leon, Assistant Professor of Architecture;

Mark Schatz, Lecturer in Architecture; Nader Tehrani, Lecturer in Architecture; Neal Rantoul, Associate Professor of Photography; Craig Weiss, Technical Coordinator in Photography; Judy Ulman, Administrative Assistant; Sheldon Cheek, Administrative Assistant; Cynthia Baron, Technical Director of the Electronic Studio; Co-op and Work-Study Students: Bruce MacIntyre, Mohammed Khan, Lou Wall, Seth Merriam, Vahe Ohannessian, Jeffery Kaphingst, Rusty Walker, Cristina Rivera, and Kimberly Drews.

Finally I would like to extend my special thanks to Gov. Michael Dukakis, Visiting Distinguished Professor of Political Science; Peter Vanderwarker, Photographer; and Kathleen Speranza for their special help with this effort.

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1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000

URBAN D E SIGN C H A R R ET T E

copyright 1994 George Thrush & Northeastern University