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Trends and thoughts on the world of new urbanism from Greater Boston and the across the World.
![]() Mayor Walsh is asking that every Boston resident buys five of their holiday gifts from a business on your local Main Street and support local through the #5onMain campaign. Do your part and buy local this holiday season! Also, consider supporting one of the hottest new local brewing company in Trillium Brewing. They've been closed for the past few weeks dealing with some unspecified regulatory issues and could use some support during the Holidays. Since we aren't able to buy what we most want, their growlers, consider supporting their online store and buying your holiday gifts online while still supporting what makes Boston great, it's local businesses and startups.
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A group of ten Northeastern graduate students working with local architect Tim Love have mocked up an extremely detailed model for what is one of many suggestions on how to use the 60 acre former rail yard in Allston. Six projects are attempting to do just that...Faneuil hall
![]() Dan Biederman, the man who brought New York, Bryant Park, and someone long regarded as a champion of urban management and public placemaking has been chosen to lead the charge to recreate Faneuil Hall's outdoor space. He'll have the difficult task of recreating the brand to be welcoming and inviting to both tourists and locals from a space now avoided by most locals outside of a visit from family and friends from outside Boston. Plans for the space call for a model very similar to that of Bryant Park, lots of outdoor tables and new seating to welcome more people and invite people to spend more time in the space creating a changing environment all their own. I'd love to see some local input from the burgeoning urban design and placemaking industry that's taken shape here. These firms have their fingers on the pulse of Boston as evidenced by the success of such designs as Lawn On D and The Rose Kennedy Greenway. Government Center Garage
Congress Square
111 Federal Street
Boston HarborfrontThe Municipal Harbor Planning Project is an ongoing discussion on the future of Boston's Waterfront, an area that, until the removal of Boston's other "green monster," was a blighted area unvisited by residents and tourists alike along Boston's Waterfront. Today it sits up against a glistening gem of a project in the Rose Kennedy Greenway that has reclaimed open space for the cities residents and created enormous opportunity for Boston's Waterfront. While much of the attention in this area is on the nearly 20 year attempt by developer Don Chiofaro to develop the site of the current Boston Harbor Parking Garage, city and state officials are looking at how to revitalize the entire waterfront area.
And then there's still City Hall Plaza...?
![]() City Licensing Board: For the first time in it's history, the City of Boston's Licensing Board is now being appointed by the Mayor of Boston, a change from decades of appointments still coming down from the Governor's Office. The Licensing Board regulates alcohol, food, hotels/inns, lodging, lodging houses, frats, billiards, bowling alleys and fortune tellers across the city. The Mayor was granted this authority as part of the measure handed down by the State Legislature granting the city the authority to offer more Liquor Licenses. Zoning Board of Appeals: Also yesterday, the Commissioner of the City's Zoning Board of Appeals, Robert Shortsleeve, has stepped down after 14 years of service to the city. No word yet on a replacement.
Beacon Hill Zoning: No more banks, real estate offices or other professional offices in first floor space on Beacon Hill without the approval of the Zoning Board of Appeals. Those uses have gone from allowed to conditional uses meaning that any applicant proposing any such use will have to go through a community process and Zoning Board of Appeal Process to open such an establishment in that Zoning District. The measure was first proposed by Councilor Zakim after a neighborhood battle following the announcement that Capital One wanted to open one of its 360 Cafes on Charles Street. |
Jonathan BerkStarting a dialogue on the future of urban living in Boston and beyond. Archives
September 2017
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