Prior to reading Grady Clay’s Close Up, I hadn’t actually noticed how much cities and towns follow grid like patterns. Before I always thought of Manhattan as the quintessential gridded city; it never occurred to me that Boston was also made up of lots of grids between the winding highways. Clay explains the progression of grid patterns within a city. Most cities, he states, begin with a grid orientation that follows a major geographical feature, such as a river, or a major line of transportation, such as a railroad. As the city expands, however, the grid orientation shifts to follow compass directions, and align itself with the rest of the national grid. Clay then draws attention to the breaks that these grids create when they converge and don’t match up.

Curious to see if these observations applied to Boston, I pulled up Google maps. The first thing I noticed was that the Back Bay area is gridded along the Charles, just as Clay mentioned. This led me to speculate whether this was one of the first areas to develop in Boston.

The second most prominently gridded area is along the east bank of Boston, which follows a north-south orientation around Telegraph Hill, but then breaks towards the northwest to follow a diagonal grid. At first, I was confused as to why the grid might break from a north-south orientation further inland, which seems to counter Clay’s explanation of the natural progression of a city. But then I remembered that in class we talked about how part of the Boston peninsula was manmade through landfill. Perhaps the diagonal orientation of the grid further inland was actually built to follow the contours of the old bank, before it was further expanded. Just a thought.

The rest of Boston unfortunately currently makes little sense to me. I hope to continue developing the tools for reading a city throughout the semester.

I was really excited in class as we began to talk about the history of Boston because it shed a lot of light onto the development of Newbury. I hadn’t known that Back Bay had originally actually been a bay, which was slowly developed into city land from other landfill. In my first journal, I had speculated on the grid-like structure of the Back Bay, and whether its alignment with the Charles River indicated that it was one of the first regions built in Boston. When I found out this was in fact not the case, I was curious about the origins and motivation behind its design. To find out that it in fact took over 40 years of engineering to create this piece of land is mind blowing!

In class, I also noticed from the series of maps that the Back Bay had been constructed from the east to the west, extending away from the Commons. I immediately thought about how the economic spectrum apparent on Newbury Street today might have emerged from the construction timeline. It could logically follow that because Newbury was developed over a time spectrum, the commercial venues would also follow a gradient from most established and most expensive in the oldest part of Newbury to less expensive in the younger part of Newbury.

To further explore these preliminary hunches, I read A Short History of Newbury Street on the official Newbury Street website. It states, “[Newbury] was prestigious and exclusive at its very inception.” It was originally designed as a residential neighborhood, and quickly became “the most desirable place to live in the city” because at the time, it was the newest part of Boston, with large houses and “the latest amenities.”1 Surprisingly, the history did not detail the beginnings of Newbury as a tourist and retail destination because it isn’t clearly documented. This provides a perfect question for research through primary documents.

I am also still curious about the “branding” of Newbury. How it became a mecca of fashion and eclectic dining establishments. The history also did not detail that. Interestingly, while I was researching for my first assignment, I noticed that there were a lot of hair salons on the east side of Newbury, particularly right near the commons. I didn’t think this detail was particularly worth mentioning, but in the history, it actually mentioned briefly that “for those in the city’s salon and hair style industry, there is no other location.”2 I am eager to continue my exploration of Newbury through a site visit!

Preparing and writing the assignment this week was a really enlightening experience. Through exploring my site and referencing the readings, I was really forced to think deeply about city planning both in the context of Newbury street and cities in general in order to formulate my thesis. When I first began walking my site, I was actually worried that I wouldn't have enough material to write about. I tried to take asana pictures of anomalies as I could but they all seemed to be of a similar nature. For example, I spent the majority of my time looking at cracks in the sidewalk, wondering how I would be able to find anything meaningful in them. But when I sat down to write and began to recall my walk through my site in relation to water, air, earth, and other natural themes from Professor Spirn's book, I realized the cracks in the sidewalk held an incredible capacity of information about the history of Newbury street, its design, and it's conflicts with nature.

I actually wish I had had more time to explore my site. After I began writing and unearthing the story I had captured in my photos, I realized that i had missing links in my documentation. For example, at one point I was noticing the strange sloping in the sidewalk, but decided it wasn't interesting enough to take a photo of. Later when I was writing my paper, I realized that such a photo would have been a perfect example of one of claims, that the unnatural sloping could have been a result of uneven settling in the filled land, or a corrective measure put in place to guide runoff away from buildings. Unfortunately at that point, I had run out of time to return to my site and take another picture.

On the flip side, however, I also experienced cases when I took photos that I never thought I would use. For example, I took at least five or six pictures of cracks thinking that eventually I would only choose one as an illustration. As I formulated my thesis and parsed through my images, however, I realized that many of the cracks actually had different qualities and were caused by different factors. Thus I ended up using at least three of my images to illustrate separate points.

As a result of my first- and third- hand research, I began to fully appreciate the case studies we had discussed in class about places where the city had either conflicted with or harmonized with the natural environment. And I began to fully understand Professor Spirn's school of thought, that the city should be viewed as part of nature and extension of nature. Previously I had not realized the extent of the consequences that could result from disregard to natural processes.

Following this line of thought, during my reading, one small section really struck me. In her book, Professor Spirn writes, the Boston Prudential Center never realized its full economic potential because its tall infrastructure created wind tunnels that made it particularly uncomfortable for shoppers during the biting winter and during the arid and sandy summer (Spirn, Granite Garden). This passage interested me for two reasons: one, this begins to explain why Newbury Street has been able to thrive next to the Prudential Center, and two, it goes to show how sensitive yet imperceptive people can be to the consequences of design. I look forward to continuing my exploration of Newbury Street in the next few assignments.

This semester I have been taking another architecture class in design. For my first project, my group was fascinated by the idea of evolution, so I suggested we study the evolution of Boston's land formation. Researching Boston's transformation as a whole is very different from uncovering a specific site's transformation within Boston. But the exercise really helped me put my own site in a larger context and also gave me lots of experience digging around databases to find old maps of Boston.

During our project, we focused on the topography of Boston. We looked at how Boston flattened to expand over time. Because we were so set on a singular dimension of Boston's historically, I ironically began to forget the multidimensional aspect of Boston's development. Today, reading "Mapping Boston" suddenly reminded me of how much else was good on during Boston's land growth. It was also growing economically, experiencing social and political turmoil, and developing into a hub of academia and art.

I thought this piece was an excellent transition into our next assignment because of the way it helped transition my focus. The beginning pages paint the image of Boston's physical transformation and describe the slow flattening of the hills, which is exactly what my other project focused on. In the next few pages it begins describing the growth of Boston's rich culture, which is exactly what I would like to explore in my later assignment on Newbury. U also really enjoyed the piece because it talked about the founding of various different places that I often frequent,  such as the Boston Public Library and the Museum of Fine Arts, as well as the schools that many of my friends attend, including Phillips Exeter, Phillips Andover, Boston Latin School, Roxbury Latin, and of course MIT.

It also occurred to me as I was reading "Mapping Boston," that the authors portrayed everything in a very compartmentalized way. Although they wrote about the multiple dimensions of Boston's history, they wrote each of them independently. For example, they first talked about the land development, and then Boston's economic development as a seaport, and then the city's cultural development in its famous art and academic institutions. And it seemed to flow in chronological order when in fact all these dimensions of growth were happening at the same time. Thus far this class is structured in a similar way. Each assignment asks us to explore the interactions of our site with different factors independently, to simplify the reading of the city. But it would be curious to see how everything falls in place when looked at together. How did the natural, social, political, and economic processes each compete to shape Boston's history? The complexity of this question blows my mind!

Researching maps for the new assignment has been particularly difficult for my sight Newbury Street. Other than the Sanborn maps, I haven’t been able to find any other historical maps of Newbury because it wasn’t a major street as a residential neighborhood. The Sanborn maps, however, have provided significant detail for me to parse already.

I didn’t realize how difficult it can be to read maps well. There are so many fine details to carefully track through the years, such as the alteration of different buildings and their materials, the addition of steam holes and storm collection systems, etc. It is also difficult to find a motivation for the changes that occurred without any additional research.  Newbury Street in particular is also difficult because it is such a long linear site, thus it takes four or five Sanborn maps to piece together the entire street, and comparing each block individually is time consuming and tedious.

Thus far, I have tracked the progression of Newbury through the 1910s, during which not much of Newbury changes. My most interesting finding, however, was finding the original MIT on Newbury Street. Although I had known MIT had originally been located in Boston, I had no idea it was Newbury Street. The Sanborn maps also detailed where Walker Memorial used to be. It is interesting to reflect the sharp contrast between historical Newbury Street as a place of academia and modern Newbury Street as a commercial hub. Today, stores and cafes occupy where MIT used to be.

I am eager to continue reading the maps into the 30s and 50s and pinpoint exactly when Newbury ceased to be a residential neighborhood. I am also curious to see if this transition was abrupt and gradual and whether or not it somehow corresponded to the disappearance of MIT. From my preliminary scrutiny of the earlier maps, I have also noticed that the properties near Boston Commons are all slightly larger than the ones near Massachusetts Avenue, albeit not significantly. The difference in property sizes could be a reason why higher-end stores occupy the region of Newbury Street closer to Boston Commons. Indeed, higher-end stores on Newbury Street today have correspondingly larger properties than middle class stores.

This past week, reading Jackson’s Crabgrass Frontier has really helped me put my maps into more perspective. Previously, when only relying on my own observations from my maps, I could not really make any substantial or interesting conclusions beyond “this building has changed” and “that building disappeared.” I was actually really worried that my paper would only be able to state simple conclusions, such as “Newbury Street transitioned from residential to commercial use,” which I had already known and was not very interesting. Jackson’s Crabgrass Frontier, however, provided an excellent context for me to understand the motivations behind the transitions and appearances of buildings and even specific institutions or commercial buildings.

For example, I had previously observed an uncanny appearance of new private schools in the 1951 map of Newbury Street. In Crabgrass Frontier, Jackson explains the start of the Baby Boom in the 40s post-World War II. Now it makes sense that the rapidly increasing population would result in a rapid increase in the demand for education. As another example, I had also observed in the 1914 map, a transformation of the block nearest Mass Ave into automobile central. Jackson also explained the rise of the automobile in the United States in the early 1910s, and the statistic that every 1 in 8 people owned an automobile by 1913.

It is surprising how closely Newbury Street’s transformations reflect the overarching social and cultural themes in the United States. These small details from Jackson’s book have also given me much richer detail to write about. It has also changed the direction of my approach to my paper. Rather than focus on why Newbury Street changed from residential to commercial, I will mostly now focus on why specific buildings on Newbury Street changed over time, as motivated by the social themes of the United States. By using the social transitions as an organizational “backbone,” I will also be able to focus on more relevant details/transitions on Newbury Street, making my paper more cohesive.

Writing my third essay was an interesting experience because the conclusions that I derived were completely different from those that I derived in the second essay. In the second essay, because we were only focusing on natural processes, I concluded that Newbury Street was very poorly designed. In the third essay, however, because we were only focusing on reading maps over time, I concluded that Newbury Street was actually very well designed, as a social and cultural center. Originally built near the periphery of the city, it immediately became a place of wealth and status. Then, as the city expanded into the suburbs, Newbury Street was close enough to the center of the city to also develop into a center for culture, arts, and fashion. Its location allowed Newbury Street to benefit from the diversity of city life without being caught up in the noisy and dirtier city center.

Writing two essays that explored the natural processes and social/cultural processes independently helped me realize the complexity of the city, which occupies both these realms. And although both natural and social/cultural processes can be segregated and examined separately, they are also very much intertwined within the city. And right now, I can only speculate their multidimensional relationship with each other. I am eager to see what I will uncover in our next assignment, Traces and Trends.

I really enjoyed the part of Hayden’s piece The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History that talked about the complexity of the word “place.” Not only does it refer to a specific location, she says, but it also refers to the social, cultural attachments, and even the biological reactions induced by that location. From a physical standpoint, Hayden describes the place as defined by its buildings and natural landscape. This can start “as soon as indigenous residents located themselves” and begin to build “a town” that eventually grows into a city (page 20). Socially and culturally, a place is shaped by its ethnicity, its political structures, its economy, and other social interactions. Interestingly, Hayden also mentions how a place is defined by the human experience, and therefore intertwined with biology and psychology. I had never considered the relationship between biology and city when in fact we use all five senses to perceive the city and develop certain emotional attachments to specific “landmarks,” such as happiness or stress. For example, children as early as three years of age will show interest in landmarks, showing a very natural human ability to perceive and recognize a specific place (page 16).

Reconsidering my own site with this biological lens in mind, I can reframe the success of Newbury Street through the five senses. Sight:  Newbury Street is aesthetically pleasing to look at, with its old-fashioned brownstones and shiny large window displays. As a hub of fashion, each store also advertises visually stimulating displays of apparel in the latest color palettes. Smell: Because it is a largely pedestrian street, it doesn’t smell like the usual city-center car-exhaust smell. Even better, the restaurants add to the aroma with their fine cuisine. Taste: Newbury Street houses a unique group of local restaurants that cannot be found in many other places, such as The Cafeteria, Trident Café, or Sonsie’s. Touch: As an outside commercial center, the feel of the outside air provides for a rather refreshing walk down the street. Walk into a store and the textures of the fabrics in a boutique, smoothness of the books at a bookstore, or lightness of a haircut after walking out of a salon all add to the rich tactile experience. Finally, sound: To listen to Newbury Street is to hear the music of street performers, clicking heels of business men and women, rustling of shopping bags, the chatter of a good time, and the overall bustle of a place that is alive.

When considering Newbury Street through these five senses, it becomes clearer why it has perpetuated as a hub of activity. Newbury Street provides a full body sensory experience that leaves city folk with an upbeat emotional stamp that begs them to come back for more.

Newbury Street originally intrigued me for its unique vibe and economic transition. Through spending the semester delving deep into its history and deciphering its trends, I have reached a point where I feel like I have a much better understanding of Newbury Street, but at the same time I also feel like I have barely any understanding at all. The former is because I now know more about Newbury Street’s history, development, and growth than I ever had in the past. The latter is because the more I have learned, the more I have realized the vast complexity of Newbury Street and the more I have become aware of how much more I do not know.

In the first assignment, I posed several questions for myself to explore when I chose Newbury Street. First, why is Newbury Street catered to the upper middle class? Second, how did the socioeconomic spectrum develop? Third, why has it remained a largely pedestrian neighborhood? And fourth, how has it stayed so successful when it is so close to the Prudential Center? Because these questions were posed without much knowledge to the complexity of urban planning, they were all fairly simple, and more and less explored the social and economic development of the site.

Each of these questions was answered in my third assignment. For example, I discovered that Newbury Street began as a wealthy residential neighborhood, so from the start its architecture and design was elegant and graceful and its property value was very high. These factors perpetuated its upper middle class atmosphere. Newbury Street was also always designed as a narrow street, so when the car was introduced, the street could only accommodate one-way driving, leaving the neighborhood largely pedestrian. In addition, I found out in my research that Newbury Street established itself as a commercial hub long before the Prudential Center was built. Therefore the transportation revolution was more centered on access to Newbury Street with the subway and bus system at Hynes. The second question was harder to find an answer for, but in my fourth assignment, I found that the socioeconomic economic spectrum along Newbury Street is probably caused by a developing trend for higher end stores to take over the property leases.

This was all interesting and I learned an incredible amount from both my third and fourth assignment about the social and economic development of an area. But the second assignment was probably my favorite of all the assignments, because it expanded my realm of urban planning knowledge the most. In the beginning of the semester, I very much conceptualized urban planning as a socioeconomic construct. But that assignment really helped me broaden those boundaries and realize how much the natural environment is just as important to urban planning decisions.

When looking at Newbury Street from a purely socioeconomic standpoint, it is an extremely successful commercial hub, founded on the unique historical social trends in Boston and America. But when looking at Newbury Street from a natural perspective, it isn’t very well designed, and could have been even better. The sidewalks and streets are still riddled with cracks, the trees sap without strength, and the basement entrances are decorated with misaligned drains.

During our last class, I also realized what other aspects urban planning can encompass, such as race, education, and community when learning about the Philadelphia project. To see how so many diverse perspectives and dimensions have to be considered when implementing a project is incredible. To see how each decision made by an urban planner can impact so many different dimensions is also very interesting and slightly terrifying, to realize how much influence a decision can have in improving or negatively affecting a community.

I am pleased with how much I have learned this semester about urban planning as a field, and for having the opportunity to gain a little firsthand experience through the exploration of my site.

The presentations this week were all thoughtful and well done. It was interesting to hear about everyone’s sites in a more “broad picture” presentation and compare and contrast it with my own presentation.

I found it most interesting when people presented about parts of their site that were most different from mine because I could learn about a new dimension of the city. For example, Newbury Street doesn’t have much to say about major transportation changes, whereas several people presented about how the Big Dig, the Greenway, the Central Artery, etc. dramatically shifted and shaped their site. In her presentation, Angela talked about how all three of these major shifts, as well as South Station, each left an important mark on her site. On one hand, they partly destroyed certain areas to make way for the large roads and train tracks; on the other, they allowed for easy access of raw materials, labor, etc. and catalyzed industrial and commercial growth.

Another factor that was absent in my site but very prevalent in urban planning considerations is race. Lin talked a lot about how the prejudices toward Chinese people heavily shaped Chinatown’s architecture and presence. The Chinese Anglicized their restaurant names, exaggerated oriental qualities in their architecture, and added more gaudy/flashy signs to welcome tourists and other local Bostonians. Sarah also mentioned the influence of Irish residents in her presentation on Andrew Square, and how many of the areas they lived in had stayed relatively shabby because the government overlooked the need for renovations.

These two themes differed the most from experiences with analyzing my own site and I expanded the breadth of my knowledge significantly just from listening to those presenters.

It also amazed me how, although all the sites are from Boston or Cambridge, all of them differed quite vastly. For example, my site is completely residential and high end, whereas the Financial District is also high end but completely commercial and industrial and Andrew Square is also partly residential but much more low end. And each of them has different factors contributing to their development and history. At the same time, however, there are still several common themes underlying each person’s site. For example, the many people found a common relationship between transportation and the development of industry or a dichotomy between modernity and historical preservation signature to Boston. I really enjoyed listening to the presentations and gaining a more complex understanding of Boston and Cambridge.

I wanted to spend this journal reflecting on my revision for my fourth assignment: Traces and Trends. One of the biggest improvements I need to make is to add a cohesive thesis statement to tie in my full argument. I struggled with this a lot the first time I wrote the paper because my observations seemed relatively scattered. For example, I observed that Newbury Street has artifacts from its residential time period, traces in the sidewalks from the automobile, and layers caused by its need for historical preservation as well as increasing modernity. And I couldn’t really pinpoint a cohesive argument that all three of these observations could support.

Now I think, however, that these observations all contribute to argument that Newbury has forever been shaped by money. As a residential neighborhood, homes were designed for wealthy families with servants and carriages. When the automobile came around and transportation became much easier, the wealthy moved away from Boston to the suburbs. The transition of Newbury Street from homes into stores was again driven by money, because as it no longer because fashionable for the wealthy to live in the city, no single family or individual could afford the huge properties in the neighborhood. Thus, they were taken over by businesses and institutions. The popularity of the automobile on Newbury Street left with the wealthy and the garages that had cropped up everywhere ended up shutting down from lack of demand.

Today, Newbury Street is driven by the money of tourism. Brand new buildings sometimes appear older than historic buildings because of a trend to play up Boston’s history. Stores closest to the Common also spend much more money beautifying their store fronts, the sidewalks in front of their businesses, and adding decorative plants, to cater to tourists that shop along Newbury Street after they’ve walked through Boston Common.

I still have to refine this thesis a little more and continue reshaping it, but I think it’s off to a good start.