Bean Town and Concrete

For those of you who know and love Boston, here is an article providing one perspective on the debate regarding City Hall Plaza.

LAND online - Landscape Architecture News Digest

For those of you who have never lived in an urban area with a monumental modernist civic project the hub bub can be baffling. These sweeping concrete monoliths and wide expanses are often despised and cursed by architects, planners, and families with strollers (stairs... never ending stairs...), but also have their defenders.

When we lived in the Albany area, I helped organize a conference on the Empire State Plaza and other urban renewal projects. The Empire State Plaza consisted of a massive 1.7 billion dollar project that demolished about 98 acres of of working class neighborhood, replacing them with a raised plaza that now houses about 13,000 government workers. The family used to visit the complex to go to the State Museum, the archives, or the ear popping elevator of the Corning Tower (New York's tallest building outside of NYC). We usually didn't do much strolling on the plaza itself as it tended to be windy and lacked cover. We normally would grab a hotdog at street level, and head to the park area of the nearby State Capitol Building.