Considering that I often don’t enjoy “modern art” much, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed a visit today to the new Institute for Contemporary Art. Honestly, I went mostly to see the new building, an architecturally intriguing addition to the waterfront; but the art was worth experiencing as well.
Kudos to the ICA [...]
Archive for December, 2006
A Visit to Boston’s New Institute for Contemporary Art
December 28, 2006Building More Roads is One of the Worst Solutions for Congestion, Not an Answer
December 27, 2006Sam Stanley bemoans Boston traffic gridlock, notes the soaring amount of urban vehicle miles travelled, and then trots out a tired solution that’s never worked: Build more highway capacity (Making Gridlock a Priortity, today’s Boston Globe op-ed page). But guess what? There’s simply not enough land to keep boosting highway capacity in urban environments – [...]
Plans For A More Walkable Chicago
December 26, 2006Chicago Mayor Daley “has big plans to make things safer for those who prefer strolling to motoring,” the Chicago Tribune noted in an editorial today. “A redesign of many curbs and intersections is under way to make them more pedestrian-friendly and render the act of crossing the street less risky. Also on the drawing board: [...]
Walking for Dinner
December 24, 2006As I was driving home from work in massive amounts of traffic, the thought of heading anywhere else in my car was rather uninspiring. And one look at the Super Stop & Shop parking lot told me that pretty much everyone was stopping to pick up some groceries on their way home. Ah, if only [...]
Adventures in Walking Along Rte. 30
December 20, 2006With the seasonal traffic particularly awful this time of year, I tried parking once and walking to several destinations along Rte. 30 last week. It was an, um, interesting experience.
First, some good news. The walk from Stop & Shop to the new Lowe’s is drastically improved, thanks to the new walkway along the side of Lowe’s [...]
Globe Op-Ed Contributor Responds on North End Pedestrian Plan
December 18, 2006Back in September, David Kruh (who’s written two books about Boston’s Scollay Square, razed for the hideous City Hall Plaza development) wrote a column on Boston’s “love/hate relationship” with the automobile, criticizing the concept of a pedestrian-only zone for Hanover Street. I posted a response, arguing that the North End is quite different from the [...]
More Pedestrian-Friendly Rte. 9 Frontage for New Natick Mall?
December 16, 2006Natick Mall owners will be seeking another 65,000 square feet of retail space along Rte. 9, the MetroWest Daily News reported last week. “The new section, which would be built in the Rte. 9 parking lot between Macy’s and the Lord & Taylor, would look like a row of storefronts along a street, said Jim Grant, [...]
Mixed Reaction to Mayor Manino’s Plan For New Waterfront City Hall
December 13, 2006Few love Boston’s current city hall, an ugly structure easily mistaken for a massive parking garage surrounded by a “public plaza” so offputting that it often remains nearly empty even on beautiful summer days when nearby destinations like Quincy Market are bustling. However, I question Mayor Manino’s solution: selling off the existing site and building [...]
