Boston’s City Hall and Plaza

Regular readers will recall that I was in Providence RI and Boston MA in January (see Commonwealth Mall and North End). Looking back over the photos I took, I realized I hadn’t yet written about Boston’s City Hall (wiki).

If the windows were narrower you might think it was a prison. The building is considered a prime example of the brutalist style. Brutal is correct.

Even more brutal is the wasteland known as Government Center (wiki), the plaza that connects city hall to adjacent state and federal office buildings. The master plan for this urban renewal disaster was done by the famed Chinese-born architect I.M. Pei.

Pei also gets credit for a destructive downtown master plan for my hometown, Oklahoma City. There an underground tunnel system originally known as The Concourse was created to connect downtown buildings.. Shops and restaurants that could at one time survive off of people on the street were also located in this underground maze. It is not all underground, however, as some includes skywalks. It does an excellent job of keeping people off the sidewalks. — I’m not sure of his involvement in the tunnel system but it was done around the same time frame in the 1970’s. Namely he advocated razing many small blocks and creating large superblocks (four small blocks would become one big unfriendly block). OK, back to Boston and the horrible public space he helped create there.

Skating is prohibited but that is really the best use of the open space.

Yes it was a cold day in January when I was in Boston but pedestrians were out and about all over the city — just not here in this horrible space.

In the 20th Century most architects and urban planners abandoned all that we knew about cities and they began to foist their experimental notions upon their clients at great financial cost to tax payers. People lost their homes so these men could try out their “bold visions.” Without waiting to see results city after city jumped on the wipe it all out urban renewal bandwagon. The only thing proven by this process was that you could erase traces of the past — both the people and the buildings that contained their lives. This section of Boston had theaters with burlesque shows — the area was certainly tired but in no way did it need to be completely erased. The erase it bare and start over mentality was simply that this new breed of architect & planner failed to see any value in the existing forms. Plus the existing was in the way of their large scale experiments. Our cities became their labs. They and the general public confused having new sanitized spaces with real city life. The consequences 40-60 years later were not realized at the time.

Boston’s Mayor has proposed selling city hall and the plaza to developers. The architecture and preservation community have both fought to designate them as landmarks. Oh they are a landmark — the poster child for bad urban design type of landmark. Bostonians hate their city hall — you cannot find a postcard of it anywhere.  We need to save those elements that contribute to a high quality urban life and disregard these failed urban renewal experiments.

Lessons from a West Palm Beach FL Lifestyle Center

The new owner of the failing St. Louis area enclosed mall, Crestwood Plaza, recently announced plans to raze the place and construct an open air “lifestyle center” on the site. Subsidies from the city of Crestwood will be sought (surprise).This made me think of one such center I saw last Fall when I was in Florida for the Rail~Volution conference. With the registration they gave us passes for all of their transit systems. So on my last day I took their Tri-Rail line up to Palm Beach. This is a heavy rail line serving several counties in the south Florida region. I was using the line on a Sunday so I didn’t get any picture as to how well it does serving commuters.

Not much existed around the depot but I could see buildings off to the east — toward the water so that was the direction I walked.

After several blocks of nothing I found something of interest:

Above on the left is a grocery store and on the right is the back end of the lifestyle center — the “front” faces onto a major road — more on that later. At first I wasn’t sure what it was I just knew the buildings were up to the sidewalk and of multiple levels

Up half a block I spotted motorcycle/scooter parking. Nice.

I was at the North end of “City Place” — a mixed-use upscale lifestyle center. The name is only part of selling a city/urban lifestyle. As you can tell from the map this development integrated itself into the existing street grid.

Three story buildings aligned both sides of South Rosemary Ave. The upper floors of most of what you see above is residential.

The upper floors overhang the sidewalk space to create an environment safe from the hot Florida sun. The high ceiling gives it an open feeling.

looking back the other direction toward the intersection we see shrubs — the line of travel was shifted. I had lunch at the outdoor patio you see on the left and I observed that most people crossing the street above went to the left of the shrubs rather than to the right for the crosswalk. The lesson here is that people take the shortest route — architects and planners need to remember as much. If they would take the time to do a pedestrian circulation study of their proposed design they’d catch these issues. Sadly, more time is spent on the circulation of cars. Still this project is a thousand times better than a typical strip or enclosed mall.

The main street is narrow with on-street parking to help give that city/urban feeling. Balconies, even when vacant, suggest a lively streetscape. But don’t get any ideas about running a clothesline across the street from building to building — this is not a typical urban street — it is under the control of one management company.

Further down the street we see a large multi-level Macy’s was integrated into the design. Looking closely at the design it is easy to find flaws with the execution but just walking down the street it works as intended — to blend in and mask the true size of the store behind the walls.

Up next was a pleasant surprise — a former United Methodist church was reborn as the centerpiece of the whole project with life as a performance hall. The inclusion of an existing structure within the development site added a nice bit of history lacking in the new buildings.

A modest sized plaza with outdoor dining is at the rear of the old church. An important lesson here, which they did well, is to make the plaza a good size but not so big that it looks empty most of the time.

By putting the stage in the middle of the space it broke up the area to keep it from being too expansive. The plantings and pavement further help break down the overall size of the space.

Sadly the entire project lacks bike parking. Here cyclists used the pole from a stop sign. Unfortunately the sop sign was placed at the end of a crosswalk so the bikes now contribute for blocking the pathway. This project has numerous parking garages hidden behind the buildings but they failed to plan for people arriving by a mode other than the car. This area, not far from the water, has a number of condo buildings nearby so it should have been assumed that some customers would bike.

We’ve now reached the south edge — a major blvd in West Palm Beach. As you can see in the distance are nearby condos.

Directly across the street to the south is more new housing nearing completion. Unfortunately crossing the boulevard on foot wasn’t part of the plan — at least not that I saw.

Entering from the main entry (above) you certainly feel like you are going into a singular unified project rather than just another city street. Such a tactic is probably necessary to attract the right tenant mix, the right shoppers and the right residents. Still, Im glad that in other directions that it just blends so much better.

Housing types vary within the project — these townhouses with garages are great for those that may not care for an over a store type of unit. Note this is an alley serving these units — pedestrian entrances face courtyards or in the case of the ones on the left facing a public street.

Overall not a bad project. Many of our St. Louis area projects would do well to copy elements such as the streets in addition to the building scale. Loughborough Commons, for example, would have been outstanding with a main street through it’s center and side streets connecting to the adjacent streets. Sure this type of project costs more to build but you also get more in return. I doubt that whatever replaces Crestwood Mall will be as diverse as the above project. It will really come down to the vision of the developer and their architect as I am certain the City of Crestwood has no vision beyond sales tax revenue.

Going out for a bit

Yesteday I did something I hadn’t been able to do since my stroke — I went out to lunch with a friend. Getting in and out of her vehicle was easier than getting through the doors at the local Mexican joint here in Mt. Vernon, MO. Once inside it was great — good food (although I couldn’t even eat half), a menu with numerous choices and nobody taking my blood pressure or giving me medications. So being at a restaurant out in public was a great feeling — like my life is getting back to normal. I’ve had outside food a few times in the last six weeks (brought to the hospital) but most has been so-so hospital food. So far I’ve lost about 10% of my body weight.

Food aside, being among the general public was the real reward. Granted we were not in public space such as a sidewalk or park. In a town of 4K they don’t typically have bustling public spaces. A restaurant near the freeway exit had to do.

We should never underestimate the importance of space where the public gathers — be it privately owned or truly public. You never know what someone else is going through.
We went out again for dinner last night and lunch today. Perhaps the folks in this town are a bit more used to seeing people in wheelchairs but nobody batted an eye as I wheeled into the three restaurants. All three would have been a challenge for me on my own (door locations, small access areas, tall thresholds, etc). However all were happy to hold a door and with my friend pushing we did just fine. Still, being able to navigate the chair myself would have given me more dignity.

Bill introduced in MO house related to universal design in affordable housing

From M.a.d.e.n. (Missouri Advocates with Disabilities Empowerment Network):

Rep. Rachel Storch introduced the universal design bill this week. The bill, HB 2459, is still unnamed. HB 2459 creates laws related to the design of affordable, accessible housing units. Click here to learn more about the bill.

Universal Design differs from ADA in that it tries to create spaces usable by all — eliminating steps and other obstacles. When you find yourself suddenly disabled your housing choices, especially those that are affordable, become very limited in number. My loft will require a few modifications for my return but the open design with limited doors is a good start. Having more universal choices in the affordable category could only be a good thing.

A Changed Man

Nearly dying and now going through intensive physical therapy causes one to stop and think about what is important. In the last few years here I’ve focused often on details. On one hand these details don’t seem as important too me and on the other they seem even more important. I’m alive — I should be happy right? But life is short and it is the little details that impact our quality of life. Simply breathing everyday just isn’t enough. I am going to be far more demanding of a quality environment than before. Every year in our region we spend hundreds of millions if not billions on new infrastructure and buildings — are we getting our money’s worth? Does this money add to improved public space or simply so much square footage of new retail? I see no reason to settle for anything less than high quality public spaces. Life is too short to be spent in strip centers, boring subdivisions and stuck in traffic.