East Back Bay, Boston MA

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Journals

 

Journal 1:

After the first class, I began considering sites in Boston that I would like to use for the upcoming project. I first thought of picking a site somewhere along the stretch from Commonwealth Ave/Mass Ave to Boston Common; I really love the walk through the Comm Ave mall, past the brown stones, and through the park. However, this is definitely to large of an area to cover, so I would have to find a way to narrow down a more specific site. I think it might be interesting to choose an area surrounding the FSILG that I am associated with, which is located at 253 Comm Ave, just between Gloucester and Fairfield. There is a good mix of residential, commercial, and public spaces there. I have always really liked the area of Boston down by Government Center and the Aquarium as well, though. It would likely be very interesting to study an area near the water, as there has likely been a great deal of use/change to that area over the years; that area in particular has quite a bit of historical importance as well. I'm hoping to visit both areas again when the weather clears up in order to help me come to a decision. The upcoming lectures/assignments/readings may also help me to determine what I should be looking for in choosing a site.

 

Journal2:


While reading the Granite Garden, I found the overview of climate-based effects on an urban environment to be very interesting; the variety of climatological effects particular to cities was surprising to me. I hadn't realized to what extent urban planning and architecture requires careful consideration of climatological effects caused by the unique layout and characteristics of a particular city, in its entirety.
I also found the diagram of wind speed/flow around a building (pg66) to be really interesting. While walking around, I've experienced the effect of unusual wind patterns due to a complex building structure/layout, but I've never been able to predict how the wind patterns would change as I moved throughout a space.

Sometimes, as a pedestrian, it's difficult to understand the reasoning between aspects of urban design, but it's been pretty exciting to read about some of the processes that urban planners go through/consider in designing a space.

 

4/13/13

It was very interesting to listen to the presentations of the my fellow class members on the third assignment. I noticed a lot of overlap between some of their findings and mine, as well as a lot of overlap in the trends, and explanations for these trends. The transportation revolution seemed to come up quite often, although, given that this was a major point in the required reading, Crabgrass Frontier by Kenneth Jackson, this isn't all that surprising. It was also pretty interesting for me when a question that one of my classmates still had,which they had trouble explaining based on the developments within their site boundaries, could be explained by some of the patterns that I discovered within my own site. In total, the class presentations, my research of historical maps, and the required reading all seemed to fit together so nicely to create a larger image of Boston

In preparing for the 4th Assignment, it's very interesting to see the layers of the past, which I researched via historical maps for Assignment 3, merge with the present state of the landscape of my site. Many of the features of my site that I would not have previously noticed, fit well in the context of the developmental trends I discovered in Assignment 3. I really enjoy finding all these hidden clues of the past, a great satisfaction in making the connections between the past and the present state and the processes that led one to become the other.


4/20/13

So far, Assignment 4 has been pretty fun; the connections between all the research I've done so far is really cool. The questions I posed about my site i n Assignment 1, the natural processes I studied for Assignment 2, and the chronological developments of my site all converged on each other for this assignment. I was able to draw from each assignment in explaining the traces and trends of the past in the present day state of my site. It is remarkable how certain features, such as the railroads in my site, can have such a lasting, and long term effect on the development of such a large area. This became clear over the last two assignments in particular. The discovery that a few of the natural processes I had detailed in the second assignment were also traces of the past of the site. For instance, the subsidence and water damage along some of the residential streets seemed to correlate quite well with the former banks of the Back Bay, which was extended gradually over the course of it's history from Beacon St to the modern day Charles River Esplanade.
The only thing I found kind of disappointing about the project, is that I wasn't able to spend more time on the illustrations. I really would've enjoyed making more detailed plans of some of the building layouts, and some sketches of the buildings from the ground.

 

Journal 5:

In working on the last two assignments, I've been able to see the larger trends throughout my site over its history. When i give my final presentation, I will likely focus on the influence of transportation on my site; the majority of the changes in my site seemed to coincide with changes to transportation, or were adaptations to the current transportation system. These effects were very interesting to me in researching for the my assignments, because transportation was not something that I had originally intended to focus on.
While I prepare for my final presentation, I hope to employ some of the techniques detailed in The Kind of Problem a City is to a greater extent. The major steps which the author outlines:
"1. To think about processes;
2. To work inductively, reasoning from particulars to the general, rather than the reverse;
3. To seek for "unaverage' clues involving very small quantities, which reveal the way larger and more 'average' quantities are operating."
fit quite nicely into the divisions of our past assignments; however, I feel that, at some points during my research, I didn't do this in enough detail. I often focused more on details than I did processing them in a sort of adapted scientific method to try to determine cause and effect. I tend to get very preoccupied with conveying the full catalog of anomalies/interesting points I find on my site and not wanting to leave anything out, often at the sacrifice of describing the major and overlying trends. Having completed all four assignments will, I think, allow me to review my research and observations in order to focus more on trends and reasoning than observational detail. Hopefully this will be evident in my presentation.

 

Journal 6:

Hearing everyone present on the general themes of their site over the last week has been very interesting. For the most part, the sites seem to retain a good deal of traces to their history while simultaneously embracing upgrading and taking a new direction in development. Many of the industrial sites are taking advantage of the popular loft trend by repurposing old factories or are bringing in new research and technology organizations (Kendall). The Newbury and Fenway sites all seem to be increasing residential and commercial appeal. Except for Dorchester Flats, which seems decidedly unchanged and without much hope for modernization in the near future, the Boston sites as a whole seem to be appealing to the new generation of graduate age and young working age population. Because Boston is notorious for its high density of colleges, this is not all that surprising. Colleges attract technology and startups which in turn attract young and creative workers who will be looking for affordable housing in an attractive neighborhood.