Worst New Development Nominations

[briv]

Nominate any building, development or infrastructure project that was completed and opened after Jan 1, 2008.

Please provide as much detail as possible about the project, such as links to any ArchBoston threads about the project and any official websites, etc.

[ablarc]

Virtually anything built walking-distance from Kendall Square. Take your pick; they all discourage street life about equally:

Originally Posted by mdd

I work in Kendall Square and it is so freaking boring. It's been said before in this thread and I?m sure most of you already realize it. There is literally nothing here and no street life at all. It?s basically an urban office park adjacent to a major university and bio-tech labs with a Starbucks and a Cosi. It seriously needs something interesting, intriguing, a destination, something to make me forget about work for the hour that I have off for lunch.

Lately it?s been so bad that I?ve been taking the T over to Charles and going to Charles Street/the park for my lunch hour. Adding the residences is a good first step, but unfortunately is such a bland, boring area, I don?t think I would want to live here.

[briv]

This one is easy for me: the Rose Kennedy Greenway.

The RKG is a sprawling monument to this city's lack of leadership and vision in planning absolutely anything on a grand scale (see also, SB Seaport). There was a genuine, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sew together the gash cleaved in the city's fabric by the elevated expressway. Instead, the wound has been immortalized.

And with what? The RKG lacks any clear sense of identity or purpose. It's a trickle of dressed-up lawn flanked by six lanes of traffic and strangled with on- and off-ramps. It's overwhelmed by surrounding auto traffic, prompting its designers to install walls, shrubbery, and other barriers at every turn to separate pedestrians physically and visually from the streets around them. This leads to a conspicuously introverted space, prohibits freedom of movement, and disconnects it from the city it's supposed to have "knitted together", essentially acting as much like a barrier as the old elevated artery it replaced.

And not only is it disconnected from the city, it is disconnected from itself. Try to walk the length of the Greenway. It's impossible. The road/ramp configurations make it impossible to island-hop from park to park.

Not to mention that it's virtually uninhabitable a good four months of the year. And even in seasons when the weather is relatively mild, the wind off the harbor remains fearsome.

These are just a few of the problems with our new Greenway. It has way too many to list here. It's just a dumb idea, IMO. By far the worst, most frustrating, most heartbreaking new addition to the city in '08.

[statler]

Originally Posted by Beton Brut

Is it too early to nominate the new "shelter" at Kenmore Square?

This is 'open' now, right? I know the station underground is still under construction, but the station is in use, correct?