I’m fiddling around with “themes” to update the look of this blog – it’s been pretty much the same for 2.5 years now – and also with some plug-ins that might add functionality. Thanks for your patience this weekend if the site suddenly starts looking very different as you’re browsing, or temporarily slows down.
If you [...]
Archive for September, 2006
Doing some blog tweaking this weekend
September 30, 2006Rutgers Design Competition Stresses Pedestrian Appeal, Community Integration
September 28, 2006“Rutgers University on Tuesday unveiled five architectural concepts to remake the heart of its flagship campus on College Avenue in New Brunswick,” the Record reports.
“In inaugurating the design competition, the university said it was looking for ways to make the College Avenue campus more pedestrian friendly and to better connect it with the Raritan [...]
‘Boston’s love/hate for cars?’ Oh, please
September 27, 2006Incredibly, author David Kruh compares the soul-less concrete wasteland of City Hall Plaza with the North End’s pedestrian-packed Hanover Street. In today’s Boston Globe, he writes: “As we look around the city at our experiments with auto-less streets (not just City Hall Plaza, but the mess that is Downtown Crossing) even the most anticar, pro-pedestrian advocate [...]
Lost Opportunity
September 27, 2006How can it be that a house once owned by refugees from the Salem Witch trials – people who helped found the town of Framingham – can appear as one of the state’s “10 Most Endangered Historic Resources?” How was it allowed to fall into such disrepair that, as the MetroWest Daily News reports, the roof [...]
Arcade, cont.
September 22, 2006The fate of the Arcade downtown revitalization project “will become a lot clearer in the next six months, or maybe even sooner,” according to the MetroWest Daily News, following an extension of its special permit by the Framingham Planning Board until March 2007.
The board first approved the plan in spring 2004, but a variety of [...]
More Local Outdoor Seating: Wellesley
September 22, 2006I was pleasantly surprised to see the nationally known Blue Ginger restaurant in Wellesley now offering outdoor seating. That’s another way to add life to a streetscape — not to mention allow people to enjoy the beautiful late summer/early autumn weather.
Last Sunday in Provincetown, the last-weekend-of-summer weather was absolutely perfect, and we were able to [...]
Provincetown: Sense of Place
September 21, 2006Sorry for the lack of posts over the past couple of weeks! It’s been an especially busy time. … except for a long weekend down on the Cape, which was a delightfully restful time … and where I noticed that downtown Provincetown was filled with pedestrians despite extremely narrow sidewalks, sometimes no sidewalks at all; [...]
When Zoning Inhibits Walkability
September 11, 2006A small but determined group of developers, planners and civic leaders has struggled for 12 years to create a unique urban environment in Midtown,” according to the Houston Chronicle.
“Much of what they are trying to achieve — a walkable neighborhood with a vibrant street scene — is forbidden by city development rules still focused on [...]
