City Surprises
We were chatting about The Big Dig, one of Boston’s most spectacular, expensive, and corrupt civic projects in the history of the city. Talking (read: complaining) about the hellscape that is Boston traffic is as popular as talking (read: complaining) about INSERT NAME OF SPORTS COACH EVERYONE HATES RIGHT NOW FOR RUINING PLAYOFF CHANCES OF INSERT NAME OF BELOVED TEAM.
The Big Dig was a zillion dollar project designed to alleviate traffic by submerging a chunk of main highway underground into a tunnel. Messing around with an already crumbling highway in a 300-year old city built toe-to-toe with the Atlantic Ocean. What could go wrong? The Big Dig dragged on from 1991 to 2007; it was plagued by ballooning costs, infrastructure issues, shoddy materials, design flaws, and rife with criminal grift by any number of organizations with their fingers in the concrete pie.
“Well we got the Greenway out of it,” I said. The 1.5 mile stretch of newly demolished turf where the highway used to be was eventually transformed into a beautiful ribbon of greenspace. Named after the matriarch of the Kennedy dynasty, the Greenway features seasonal gardens, fountains, food trucks, artisan markets, family-friendly events, and a rotating array of public art.
“Yeah,” he said, “but the Big Dig was about solving a traffic problem, not making a park.”
“I don’t care about cars or traffic, I care about people and so win for us.”
What I meant was that every so often a city surprises you by doing something-for-the-common-good-decent-and-wonderful. Cities are historically notoriously beastly places: crowded, loud, expensive, over-stimulated, polluted, lonely, sprawling places that seem indifferent to your existence at best and at worst actually out to get you. The culture, industry, excitement, diversity, and constant change and evolution are often the trade-offs that inoculate you against the gnarly aspects of city life. And then when even those things start to lose their luster, a city finds a way to win your heart all over again.
Underground at Ink Block is one of Boston’s best kept cool place secrets. Located on the lip of Boston’s South End, Ink Block is an underground “mural park” contained in 8-acres of concrete and parking lot running underneath the overpass of Interstate 93. Before the creation of Ink Block, this area was not one you wanted to linger in—mostly empty parking lots stretching out in the dark underneath a busy highway overhead, the constant flow of traffic above making it impossible to hear your screams. Here’s an idea! Let’s head down to Stabbyville and look at art!
But that’s kind of what the city did. The revitalization of the South End extended to this area beneath the underpass that did little more than connect public transportation (Boston’s MBTA) with the South End neighborhood. A collaborative effort between several city agencies, community groups, urban planning offices, and state transportation agencies resulted in the creation of the mural park in 2017. In addition to serving as an open-air gallery for some of the richest, most diverse public art in Boston, Ink Block regularly hosts community events with food and live music.
The space could have languished in perpetuity, neglected, but tolerated. It could have been scooped up and redeveloped into condos (never underestimate the power of a city to squeeze every ounce of commercial real estate out of a single square of concrete). It could have been swallowed up by any number of a city’s uncaring forces, but instead it was spared, allocated for beauty.
Surprising. Wonderful.
Urban art FTW! I love how the Big Dig had this nice "externality." True though about Boston traffic, but for tourists at least you have the great public transit that gets you to the must see places for a first timer (Boston Common, Boston PL, Faneiul Hall, etc.)
Come to Denver my friend cuz we are chockablock with city art that really astounds!
This reminds me of the Graffiti Park in Austin, TX where I used to live. It was a free-for-all space where artists could paint any time, so the walls were ever changing. Such a cool thing to see in real time.