Boston Globe: Wise stewardship of new Greenway
By Yanni Tsipis | June 22, 2009
FIFTY YEARS ago this month, the Central Artery opened for business. Envisioned as the panacea for Boston’s ages-old traffic ills, Mayor John B. Hynes described the new skyway as “a bright new highway in a bright new city.’’
The new expressway saved downtown Boston. The economic malaise that plagued the old city since the Depression faded fast, as public investments in the new highway and new public parking garages gave the “New Boston’’ an image makeover and increased downtown land values. The nexus between this public investment in infrastructure and the private investment that followed was unmistakable: The same year the Artery opened, two new corporate headquarters rose in the Financial District. More quickly followed.
It was not long, however, before signs of trouble emerged. Less than a decade later, rush-hour traffic jams became commonplace. As new development continued to embrace downtown Boston, the highway became increasingly overburdened and eventually failed altogether, choking on too much of a good thing that its planners had not foreseen. Ultimately, the Central Artery was a victim of its own success.
Fast-forward 50 years. Billions of federal dollars, Swiss-watch engineering on a grand scale, and immeasurable patience combined to eliminate the old elevated highway and replace it with a new park system.
The new Rose Kennedy Greenway is an extraordinary public amenity, an urban tree just beginning to blossom with activity and public programming. One example of the programming brought to the Greenway by the Greenway Conservancy is the Boston Public Market Association’s seasonal market at Dewey Square, at which farmers bring their produce into the urban core. Any of these farmers will tell you that a tree in bloom is a long way from bearing fruit and must be carefully pollinated and cultivated in order to do so. The Greenway is no different.
The Greenway Conservancy, in its few short months of stewardship, has done an admirable job of planning for the future success of the new parks. However, as this organization tackles the tasks of maintenance, programming, planning, and advocacy, it is already apparent that the Greenway is at risk.
As was the case 50 years ago, private development interests have reacted quickly to the public investment that dramatically transformed the image of the Central Artery corridor and the value of abutting parcels. Already, new development proposals are sprouting up along the Greenway, seeking to capture the value created by billions of dollars of public investment. Some of these proposals are reasonably scaled and respectful of the Greenway’s presence, some not.
Large-scale new development is essential to Boston’s continued vitality, but canyonizing the Greenway with ill-conceived projects would deprive the parks of the sunlight and daylight needed to encourage both horticultural and human activity. Such projects would overpower the Greenway’s narrow scale with height and bulk that is appropriate in the urban core, not on the water’s edge. Over time, these environmental and visual impacts have the potential to make the Greenway fail, just as the Central Artery failed for similar underlying reasons.
As development proposals emerge for newly daylighted parcels along the Greenway, city and state regulators, the Greenway Conservancy, and other stakeholders must ensure that these proposals benefit, not diminish, our newfound public realm. Commendably, Mayor Menino and the Boston Redevelopment Authority have already initiated the Greenway District Planning Study, which has great potential to establish guidelines to protect the public’s long-term investment in the new park system.
Intense new development is the economic, urbanistic, and social lifeblood of downtown Boston, and must be promoted where and when appropriate. But when it comes to the Greenway edges, the city must not repeat past mistakes by allowing the value created by this great public investment to be instantly reaped by private interests in the absence of a thoughtful, long-range plan - a plan that will ensure that the Greenway is not, in its own way, a victim of its own success.
