This week, Monday was presentation from students about their sites, and Wednesday was discussion about the themes and trends we had learned about during the final presentations.
I presented my site on Monday. My presentation briefly covered each of the major topics we had covered in our papers. I explained how I selected the site because I was interested in the economic and cultural influences from Fenway Park and the influences of nearby educational institutions. I covered the notable natural forces on the site – primarily via the Emerald Necklace, but also via other on-the-ground observations. I explained the history of the site by exploring previous land uses, previous tenants, and the patterns they represented, and matched the changes with photos that I had taken. Finally, I covered the traces and trends of the site with photographs I had taken, drawing the photo evidence into repeated themes I noticed while exploring the site. I concluded by looking forward for the site. I envisioned a future for the site where many of the dilapidated buildings had been redeveloped into upscale residential units for the young professionals who were increasingly making their careers in Boston. The future residents would make use of public transport, use bicycles, or walk. I drew out this future from the current trends that I had already noticed on the site – the increased use of transport, the many new mixed-use developments that were being built nearby the site, and the types of residents that were already residents of the neighborhood.
After presentations on Monday, we had an open discussion on the sites. The major theme that emerged was the influence of institutions on the sites that had been presented. For example, Tufts Medical Center was recently built in Chinatown and was expanding there. Another example was the Christian Science Center, which was shrinking and the excess space was being taken up by Northeastern University. Many students expressed anti-institution, anti-development views, believing that it was not fair that these institutions were displacing residents to expand their campuses. In particular, one person studying Chinatown hoped that the residents would organize against Tufts Medical to prevent their expansion.
I had much the opposite opinion. Fifty years ago, Boston was stuck in an economic malaise as its manufacturing base declined – its largest industry and employer. These institutions had brought tremendous wealth and a huge general economic recovery to Boston, and now Boston is a globally influential city because of them. The institution, with their billions of dollars of endowments, had made a huge investment into the city, and they attracted top talent from across the globe. Since education is such a huge driver of Boston’s economy, the city should embrace and support its expansion. Since Boston has historically had very small plots, it is difficult for institutions to gather the necessary land. The anti-development mindset will not make the housing more affordable – instead, it will push up the cost of doing business more.
I think the American city is inherently dynamic – its land uses are never fixed, its economy never at a rest, and its people always open to new ideas. That’s why redevelopment by different owners is not something to be fought against. I think the urban planning discipline puts too much weight in preservation instead of change. This may be because we are studying the discipline in Boston, one of America’s staunchly preservationist cities. In comparison, Chicago seems to generally be a more pro-development city at the government level, even though both have anti-development groups. Since “city processes in real life are too complex to be routine” (Jacobs 441) many development plans in both these cities are reviewed on a case-by-case basis, demanding changes on the project until it fits the government worker’s vision for the city – a vision that mirrors other developments they have worked with.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the class. I learned to see the urban landscape from multiple perspectives – natural and historical, as well as economic. It was only towards the end of the class that we had open discussions on our sites’ futures. I was enjoying the debates we were having about gentrification and site development, and it revealed which perspective we put more value on. I put the most value into the economic perspective; I believe that a city must first have a healthy economy first to be able to make investments into its appearance and well-being. I have been exposed to a huge variety of perspectives through the course.
(Some Journals Omitted)
This week, we brought our attention to looking and analyzing maps of our site. We started this process last week – we were looking at maps of the class site in Cambridge. In Tuesday’s class, we shared in class the observations we made in our sections of the Cambridge site. I noticed that economics and politics were the major affecters of change in all of the sub-sites.
The first driver was economic – as the United States economy became more dependent on manufacturing instead of commodities, Cambridge and the larger Boston area became much more industrial. This change has ‘knock on’ effects. First the land use in Cambridge changed dramatically, from primarily residential to heavy industry. As these factories expanded, they often changed the street layout, combining several blocks into superblocks as their factories expanded and required more land. Second, the growth of factory jobs attracted many poor people or new immigrants to the district. They required cheaper housing, so many single family homes turned into multi family duplexes. Much of the development was in-fill development. Sam Warner in Mapping Boston describes this transition as the change from the Colonial Period to the Industrial Period.
The second driver was political. As urban decay started to become a problem in the 1950’s onwards, there was a political movement towards reusing under utilized land for public housing. That’s what we saw across the whole Cambridge site, with superblock public housing. In addition, swaths of repossessed and abandoned lots were turned into city owned parking lots. The whole city suffered this decline immediately post World War II, as Warner describes it. At the time, the US economy was heavily led by manufacturing, an industry that had declined in Boston because of its high wages, high taxes, and expensive land. Boston’s strong points, its excellent educational institutions and financial institutions, hardly mattered during this era. Warner describes the various initiatives to offset the loss of these manufacturing jobs, like Mayor Curley’s program of small infrastructure improvements, but the decline was structural to the New England and Cambridge economies.
In our workshop on Thursday, we brought in any significant historical maps we found of our site. We then followed the same analytical process as in our Cambridge site. We colored the maps using international zoning colors. I discovered that although my site had been filled in much earlier, the site itself did not have any development on it until 1908. This is probably because the Emerald Necklace’s construction allowed the whole area to become usable. Thus, the area was in a unique situation – many undeveloped blocks of land in an excellent city location were available for new development. As a result, the lots were planned for apartment sized buildings since the beginning, and the area has a pleasing sense of uniformity and organization that many older parts of Boston lack. The site was not as affected by the industrial decline; the neighborhood was founded as a residential one, and because it was considered an attractive neighborhood, it managed to maintain its position and quality of life.
This week, we looked at maps of historical Cambridge – around the site we walked about two weeks ago in class. We looked at maps from several years, identified the changes between years, and analyzed why these changes occurred. We looked at historical maps ranging over more than a century - 1853, 1903, 1916, 1930 and 1970 – as well as a map of the present.
We noticed that Cambridge was developed with a quite regular street grid pattern from very early on. Not all the lots were built up, and we noticed continuous fill in development from 1853 to 1930, primarily residential development. Land use starts to change, especially in 1916 and 1930 towards industrial lots. We noticed large factory development, especially “Lever Bros” – the predecessor to the consumer goods giant Unilever Inc – come up around Cambridge, likely because of it’s proximity to the railroad, ease of distribution around the Boston area, and availability of workers. As these larger factories started to come in, we noticed that smaller streets in the grid were often eliminated to make way for the factories on the super blocks.
One of the most interesting moments in analyzing the maps happened by mistake. Many groups mixed up their maps, and asked Professor Spirn for help to identify the maps by year. In particular, we were confused between the 1903 and 1916 maps. Professor Sprin herself was confused – and told us the 1916 map must be the one “with more development,” referring to a large factory building present in one map and not the other. Later on, another group looking at the online maps realized this was a mistake, and that building had actually been torn down in the intervening time period. I had always thought urban decay was a feature of urban landscapes post-suburbanization, but this exercise made me realize that urban decay from residential and industrial neighborhoods has happened many times during American urban history.
In the later maps, we began to see the deindustrialization as factories started to leave Cambridge, presumably for lower wage and lower land cost regions outside of major Northeastern and Midwestern American cities. This land often gets turned into parking lots, denoted on the maps as “Park’g.” I am still uncertain how the city began to own these lots – I thought that the banks that lent money to the property owners would seize the properties. Perhaps many of these owners owned their properties before the wide availability of mortgages, so the city was able to seize their properties as a result of unpaid back-taxes.
This week in class, we had two major segments. The first was sharing our observations from walking our sites last weekend. The second was an analysis on how cities deal with their natural processes.
We first discussed students’ observations from touring their site. Our observations took the form of photos, augmented by our discussions. I noticed that most of the photos focused on the themes we observed on our walking tour. People captured the effects of sunlight on plant growth, how plants interacted with the man-made environment, and drainage patterns. Although these basic themes were the same, I was particularly impressed with the creative way that other students had captured the themes in their photos.
This was my favorite photo, as it showed the interaction of nature with the man-made – the sidewalk being pushed up, the dirt from the cars and the snow, and how this tree was prevailing through it all.
Second, we discussed how cities deal with their natural processes. We focused on water management, since this is Professor Spirn’s area of expertise. First, there was the observation of the problem. In Toronto, the city’s citizens and the government noticed the poor water quality in Toronto’s bay. The Professor was asked to do an analysis on the causes of this poor water quality. Her team first located causes of water pollution – the factories, the sewage drains, and the flow of the river. They then overlaid this information onto a map, marking each type of source and its type of pollution. Combined with the knowledge of water flow within the bay, it became immediately clear as to the cause of poor water. Once they identified the problem, the city was able to change its policies in infrastructure to help cut back on the pollution.
An entirely different approach that we explored was Philadelphia’s use of “green water infrastructure” over traditional “gray infrastructure.” Philadelphia faces significant issues with post-storm water control. Because the city has one of the oldest sewer systems in North America, it has combined storm and sewer drainage. When there is heavy rain, there is too much water to be effectively treated. Instead, it is often just released as overflow into the river, contaminating it sewage. Philadelphia has decided to tackle this problem by adding lots of “green infrastructure” – more parks, green roofs, and natural water treatment systems to absorb the first portion of the rain in the city. The city is actually taking advantage of natural processes instead of trying to solve the problem with entirely man-made systems – “gray infrastructure.” Amazingly, the project is expected to save the city money, showing that working with nature is more efficient than working against it.
This week, we went on a walking tour nearby Boston to learn how to observe at our sites. We started at lobby 13, walking under building 39. Professor Spirn pointed out how building structure affects a site’s airflow. In this case, the building was built over a driveway, and it created a wind tunnel effect for the pedestrians walking by. The air approaching from either North or South would be funneled into the tunnel via the plaza on either side of the tunnel. I didn’t realize that wind was affected on such a local scale by even a single building. That means that an architect must consider the effects of wind in his design. I knew about this a little bit – for example, I know the Loop in Chicago is very windy because it is packed block after block with skyscrapers, meaning wind has to flow around the building in the streets, creating an urban canyon effect.
We then proceeded around Cambridge, looking at development patterns and the interaction between nature and the world. One particularly interesting example was a tree that was growing right at a property line. The next lot had been paved over for use as parking, and there was a chain link fence immediately next to the tree. Naturally, the tree disregarded this man-made division and started to grow into the fence. The fence broke, and some the chain links became embedded into the tree’s widening trunk. The top bar of the fence was pushed out and the tree started to grow around it, forming a welt in the trunk. We discussed how it was symbolic of the interaction of man and nature in cities.
We also made note of other trees during the journey. Many trees had very little soil to grow in, so they grew slowly and never reached their full potential. Older trees that had more light and more soil were able to healthily take root, and even disturbed their surroundings. We saw several examples of roots that had pushed out, cracked, or otherwise affect nearby sidewalks and buildings. I wonder if a tree is healthy and then there is significant development around it, how will it’s growth be affected? Along Memorial drive, there are many huge trees which predate the road. Since the road was constructed, have those trees gotten less healthy?
This week, we focused on talking about how to close read our site. We had an in-class discussion about our sites. Unfortunately, I had to miss the class, because I was ill. However, I did discuss with my classmate Jose Linares about how and why we chose our sites. My site is in Fenway, south of Fenway Park. It is bordered by Brookline Ave, Boston’s Emerald Necklace/Park Drive, Queensberry St, and Kilmarnock St. It is a slice of the larger Fenway neighborhood.
This week, we focused on talking about how to close read our site. We had an in-class discussion about our sites. Unfortunately, I had to miss the class, because I was ill. However, I did discuss with my classmate Jose Linares about how and why we chose our sites. My site is in Fenway, south of Fenway Park. It is bordered by Brookline Ave, Boston’s Emerald Necklace/Park Drive, Queensberry St, and Kilmarnock St. It is a slice of the larger Fenway neighborhood.
It seems like Jose chose his site – also in the Back Bay – for many of the same reasons. There is a very interesting interplay between the geographic history and economic history. I am particularly interested in the economic and political history – so I’m interested to hear the other reasons students chose their sites.
After this week’s classes, I’m particularly excited to go out and look at the parkland bordering the site. I hope to uncover interesting details about the site through it. I’ve been inspired to do this because of our class discussion about seeing a whole soil vertical in just a brick. I’m also excited to see what happens on our walking journey on Monday – I think it might give us ideas about how to close read a site in a different light than I know how.
For more details, please check out my 4.211 class website: http://web.mit.edu/jains/www/4.211
This week, we discussed the early decisions that can change a city’s future – in terms of its buildings, architecture, economy, and other development characteristics. We took Philadelphia as an example. We looked at it’s earliest plans – a grid structure with squares for common space. I was quite surprised to see that the structure was basically the same - just slightly modified and adapted. It’s organization within blocks encouraged mixed income neighborhoods, because of the mixed size lots.
That’s also made it difficult for big buildings like skyscrapers to be built – resulting in a very unusual development pattern. In contrast, much of LA was given as land grants to ranchers, and many of these ranches were then developed into large, master planned suburbs. I believe the small lots combined with intense politics has restricted Boston’s skyscraper development.
I’m particularly excited that we analyzed Philadelphia – I’m actually headed there this weekend to attend University of Pennsylvania’s “hackathon” event. I’ll be on the lookout for so many of these landmarks and patterns we looked at.
Philadelphia is a big education city – University of Pennsylvania, Drexel, and Temple are among the biggest colleges in the city. Penn in particular is worldwide recognized for The Wharton School and is well known for its engineering school. The University has brought tremendous wealth and investment to an area with many poor neighborhoods. I am excited to see the interaction between these two different worlds. I liken it much to Harvard and MIT in Cambridge, where old money meets new money meets generations entrenched in mixed income neighborhoods.
In class we spoke about different ways in which to ‘read’ a city. First, lets talk about what it means to ‘read’ in this context. Reading can refer to looking at some physical aspect of the city, and analyzing how and why it came to be that way. For example, we noted that the Back Bay had a street grid – quite different than many other parts of Boston. I believed it was because the Back Bay was reclaimed land, and as an organized project, had a street layout to match. Reading can also refer to looking at historic documents – insurance maps that have detailed building outlines, construction dates, and material types – and asking more questions about why some sections of the city are built with brick and others built with wood. Finally, reading can also refer to looking at political and economic forces to see the development of cities – Boston began as a port, and thus the north end is the oldest part of the city, and as a result, has an abnormal street layout.
Secondly, why should we care about reading a city? Members of our class are naturally interested in cities, since they self selected into the class. Many of us enjoyed history, and wondered about the city around us. Some of us were driven by local politics to understand the city. Others are just curious about where they live. I am particularly interested in architecture, especially high rises and skyscrapers. I like to look at cities through an economic lens – what makes them important? Why do some cities grow so fast, and others decline? Why are some cities “global” cities and others simply regional? Why are some parts of a city abandoned, and others thriving? Understanding these questions also helps me understand the politics and attitudes of the people there.
Even for those less curious about city history and politics, there are many reasons to ‘read’ cities. It can help you identify real estate deals. For example, Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, near the University of Chicago, was once a very affluent area for Chicago’s educated. It declined because of the White Flight in the 1950s and 1960s, and is now gentrifying as the grand housing stock is updated and refurbished. Economically, it’s being driven by the University, as well as a trend towards urban living.