How the Big Dig went Bad?

By Jane Holtz Kay

Some projects are born great, some achieve greatness and others have greatness cast upon them, to re-work the old saying. Any of those initiatives might have sounded like a green and pleasant Prospect, as the phrase might have been intoned by English choirs with lyrical purpose, when Boston began to fashion its so-called Big Dig design on Boston's drawing boards. With the mandate to stitch the ruptured landscape in the $14.8 billion project (?now moving along to $14.9 billion with an extra $140 million) to a hair breath from $15 billion to stitch the city to the sea, the obstruction of the so-called green monster, shadowing the city would be gone.

Given what was now becoming an ever growing financial extravaganza of financing, the City Upon A Hill would no longer be severed from its better i.e., water-oriented self. Together, the high-budgeted construction enterprise and the planners supposedly knowledgeable crews would insure that the builders begin to seam the hub into the so-called Walking City, a stitching together of the roadway once intercepted by the overpass commonly called "the green monster." Boston, then, could rejoice at the thought of re-capturing the city's hoped-for and, or mandated pedestrian path, if not paradise. No more would the once-vaunted Walk to the Sea face the burrowing tunnel for cars below and the impassable walkway across their land and seascape. Or, as the saying went, no more would the "Monster that Ate Boston" dominate the City Upon a Hill, splicing it from its walkable roots. No more would planners and pedestrians suffer from lack of energy, and shrinking finances, in the soon to be funded, greened and stitched-together core as the price tag grew.

Above all, after all the years and obstructions, of the could-be, would-be Emerald City would sanction the tumultuous re-joining sought by the planners. And, as the tunnels taskers planned and scooped out their vision with great exhaustion of human and financial enterprise the planners' so-called "Walking City" would be engaged: a pedestrian-friendly from the cheek-to-jowl car traffic and foul air emitting over the "Walk to the Sea." On that glorious day, the tunnel scooped out with great exhaustion of human and financial resources would secure the integrity of the crossing streets from the cheek-to-jowl car traffic and the foul air be-clouding the vaunted "Walk to the Sea." No more would those distasteful enemies of amenity and civility violating the so-called Walking City be marred by the so-called Big Dig, was the view. They had a dream. That was then.

So it seemed. But so it was not to be. That was then. This is now. Today, the off-the-charts work has swelled from an ambling would-be walk along a green and verdant meridian into a multi-budget island of something less than a pedestrian-friendly ambience. As streets still whipped through by polluting cars traverse the route Today, many dollars and many years later, it still is not clear whether that urban dream will re-emerge and/or blossom as the current multi-budget plan pokes along.

In short: That was then. And this is now. Specifically, the work of those undertook the bucolic-sounding scope of creating the Rose Kennedy Greenway median in the center of a traffic corridor have little to show for their labors. Its island crossings look more likely to serve as interceptions than as spacious islands of repose. The once and former $14.5 billion dollar project intended to seam the city, north to south, and unite its waterfront, on one side, and urban enclaves on the other to establish in inaugurating a new era of amenity and unity, has little more to show of establishing the connection than dotting it with green.

Specifically, the small gardens along the Rose Kennedy Greenway that punctuate the city fail to stem the multi-mile-an-hour mobility while the roadways continue to create the barrier menacing the pedestrian, ignoring the friendlier paths and swelling the costs to an ever more pricey barrier between city and the sea tallying in at tk today. if you happen to traverse the path today, you will notice that it is not a whole lot different. The Greenway's would-be greeners cited may be loping along to try and plant up the strip and green the city as a common aspiration, but the long-sought vision of knitting the slip side of Boston, and, here, as in other urban renewed cities, moves at a less than 90-mile an hour planning pace.

Here, a budget once tallying in at $15.5 million, with just a few little "extras," is estimated to move a mere hair-breadth, so to speak, from its original cost, to a $15-billion plus (and rising?) total. Is that anyway to run a railroad, as they used to say when getting there was, if not half the fun, than a lot easier.

"Will They Ever Finish Brooklyn Boulevard?" yet another old saw based on local cliché. Will they ever connect this divided city and the nation's other split avenues, cut off from their waterfronts? Will they ever invigorate it with vertical as well as elongated highway values? The nation's shredded cities and communities across the ripped-over nation need a more peaceable kingdom: here, and, indeed, elsewhere, it is a pedestrian mesh and stream of islands that could contain more than paths but clutches of communities from corner to corner filling the gaps with buildings, the buildings that were, along with civic connectors and would-be, could-be community enclaves encouraging enclaves of livability and community civility stitching the nation's cities.

The question remains: Will they? Will we? ever finish the much proclaimed "Bruckner Boulevard," as activists wondered in the slash and burn era of demolition urban America? Will they ever contour the historic, holistic landscapes of the nation? In Boston and other big cities and ruptured communities the repair of the dream has yet to fulfill its visionary's hopes. The pace is slow, even as the nation begins to look at its landscape, or, more broadly, its environment and architecture. Infrastructure is a valued concept for cities across the nation. But structure and seaming are more to be applauded. Looking at our paved paradises, some continue to advance a hardtop heaven to this day. Other cities mostly meanders, or hammer, up high-rises would-be heavens. In the so-called walking city and elsewhere across the nation, it is time to re-consider such narrow dreams, de-construct the ruptured visions gone astray and connect ourselves and our cities to our fuller needs and ambitions everywhere.

A condensed version of this appeared in Architecture Magazine, March 2008.

Back to Articles Index