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Marshmallowadmiral t1_jb2vpt5 wrote

Reply to comment by SteamingHotChocolate in I guess "ugliest" depends on the weather. Looks pretty handsome rn. by oozforashag

My main issue with City Hall isn't the building itself, but rather that City Hall Plaza is an empty wasteland where a real neighborhood used to be. Scollay Square was a bustling working-class neighborhood, with its own unique character. Today, City Hall and most of the surrounding buildings see traffic only on weekdays, 9-5. That whole part of Boston feels like a monument to an era where we kicked people out of cities and reduced their neighborhoods to office parks.

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donkadunny t1_jb30lqf wrote

The surrounding buildings only see traffic weekdays from 9-5? Buddy, Faneuil Hall is directly across the street and it’s the 4th largest tourist attraction in the country. It’s much busier than you are giving it credit for and Scollay Square was demolished 60 years ago.

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Marshmallowadmiral t1_jb33jd3 wrote

The point is that nobody lives there. Yes, Faneuil Hall is a major tourist attraction and there are some restaurants and bars around there (and doesn't city hall plaza seem even more dead when you look at the crowds around Faneuil?). But the area is not a real neighborhood, it's a destination. Which I think is a major failure of American cities in general- our city centers are most often treated as destinations rather than places to live. This general attitude has some pretty bad outcomes for city dwellers, both historically and today. While Scollay Square is long gone, it's still a useful story to explain why Boston looks the way it does today, and it helps us talk about what direction Boston (and American cities) should take in the future.

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TuarezOfTheTuareg t1_jb4vcsj wrote

Weird take... Why do people need to live there? What's wrong with an area being a destination? Are you saying that every inch of a city needs to be some kind of "neighborhood" where people live? I don't get your point at all. It's nonsensical. Cities need civic and commercial districts just as much as they need residential ones. City hall could be a better destination if, for example, the concrete plaza was replaced with more interesting commercial development or open space, but to criticize it for being a destination is kinda weird.

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kdmccormick t1_jb4zcov wrote

I'm not completely disagreeing with you, but it's not true that destinations have to be non-residential. The North End is a destination and a neighborhood: people live above all those restaurants. The idea that commercial and residential need to be cleanly separated is weird modern one. People lived above businesses for hundreds of years before mid-1900s zoning laws made it largely illegal to build like that in the US.

All that's to say: another neighborhood of four-story townhouses with shops & restaurants on the first floor would be amazing to have in downtown.

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TuarezOfTheTuareg t1_jb4zrjc wrote

Yea I agree with that. It's just the characterization of "destinations" as being undesirable that was weirding me out. I'm a town planner and we talk all the time about strategies to make commercial/civic districts into more appealing destinations. That's a desirable trait! Nothing precludes people from living in areas like that too though

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donkadunny t1_jb54adk wrote

Have you even been to downtown Boston? Do you know how many buildings are already ground floor retail and residences above? There are many. Like that is actually what a ton of it already is. Ground floor retail with commercial or residential above.

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[deleted] t1_jb39m7d wrote

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Next-Editor6166 t1_jb5kmm9 wrote

Look at the Combat Zone, lower Washington St. Been high rise Ritz for a while now. No more shops & strip joints. Fun times at 3am

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calinet6 t1_jb4rxcp wrote

Yeah, like it’s just this big wasteland of flat concrete. Waste of space IMO. Sometimes I like to image what Scollay square would be today if they didn’t tear everything down to put in… flat concrete and stairs.

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alohadave t1_jb5kzup wrote

> City Hall Plaza is an empty wasteland

If they made it into an actual park, it'd help significantly. With like grass and trees and a reason to linger, rather than as a passthrough to get to somewhere else.

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