REPORT SEPTEMBER 2016 A GUIDE TO PLACEMAKING FOR MOBILITY 4 A BETTER CITY A GUIDE TO PLACEMAKING FOR MOBILITY ACKNOWLEDGMENTS CONTENTS A Better City would like to thank the Boston Transportation 5 Introduction Department and the Public Realm Interagency Working Group for their participation in the development of this research. A 6 What is the Public Realm? special thank you to the Barr Foundation for their generous 7 Boston’s Public Realm funding support. 7 Decoding Boston’s Public Realm: ADVISORY TEAM A Framework of Analysis 15 Evaluating the Public Realm A Better City 16 Strategies for Enhancing • Richard Dimino the Public Realm Boston Transportation Department 21 Small Interventions lead • Chris Osgood to Big Changes • Gina N. Fiandaca 23 Envisioning a Vibrant Public Realm • Vineet Gupta • Alice Brown Public Realm Interagency Working Group • Boston Parks and Recreation Department • Boston Redevelopment Authority • Department of Innovation and Technology • Mayor’s Commission for Persons with Disabilities • Mayor’s Office • Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics • Mayor’s Youth Council • Office of Arts and Culture • Office of Environment, Energy and Open Space • Office of Neighborhood Services • Public Works Department A Better City is a diverse group REPORT TEAM of business leaders united around a common goal—to enhance Boston and the region’s economic health, competi- A Better City tiveness, vibrancy, sustainability and • Thomas Nally quality of life. By amplifying the voice • Irene Figueroa Ortiz of the business community through collaboration and consensus across Stantec’s Urban Places Group a broad range of stakeholders, A Better • David Dixon City develops solutions and influences • Erin Garnaas-Holmes policy in three critical areas central • Jeff Sauser to the Boston region’s economic com- petitiveness and growth: transporta- To view a hyperlinked version of this report online, tion and infrastructure, land use go to http://www.abettercity.org/docs-new/Guide_to_ and development, and energy Placemaking_for_Mobility.pdf. and environment. Design: David Gerratt/NonprofitDesign.com A GUIDE TO PLACEMAKING FOR MOBILITY A BETTER CITY 5 A GUIDE TO PLACEMAKING FOR MOBILITY INTRODUCTION the places and corridors that make up Boston’s mobility system. From “pavement to plazas,” to parklets, and to pop-up interventions, municipal rights-of-way are A Guide to Placemaking for Mobility is part of a fast becoming essential to the public realm in many research series produced via the Public Realm cities. In Boston, efforts to improve infrastructure Planning Study for Go Boston 2030, Boston’s city- for people walking, biking, and waiting for the bus -wide mobility action plan. Experiential Quality was have led to new combinations of design features a key theme of Go Boston 2030’s Question Campaign that make our streets and sidewalks feel like places in 2015, and developing public spaces on streets to spend time in, rather than spaces to simply move and at transit stations that are welcoming, safe, through. A Guide to Placemaking for Mobility intro- and fun is a primary goal of this new transportation duces a framework of analysis for understanding plan. In order to achieve these objectives, A Better the relationship between mobility and public realm. City partnered with the Boston Transportation Furthermore, this document provides an overview of Department to develop the Public Realm Planning the history of Boston’s public realm, and describes Study and A Guide to Placemaking for Mobility for emerging design and planning strategies to improve Go Boston 2030, in an effort to establish a public realm action plan for the City of Boston. 6 A BETTER CITY A GUIDE TO PLACEMAKING FOR MOBILITY What is the Public Realm? network, including transit stations. The experience within the public realm is also dependent on what The public realm, at its most utilitarian level, is happens while you are there—events, interactions, the space people move through to get from place performances, sounds, smells, and emotions are to place. To that end, its design should be optimized also part of the public realm. South Station isn’t to facilitate efficient mobility across a full range just where we catch the train; it’s also where we look of modes, from cars to pedestrians, bikes, transit, at public art, where we pick up our visiting friends and everything in between. Public realm initiatives and family, and where we eat lunch. Roxbury Cross- operate around a central philosophy: that traveling ing isn’t just where we transfer from train to bus; through a city should be a positive experience for it’s also the front door for many educational and all. Since commuting through Boston is the primary religious institutions and the intersection of three interaction between citizens and the public realm, unique neighborhoods. The Charles River Esplanade enhancing the mobility system is a powerful way isn’t just part of our bicycle route to work; it’s also to improve it. where we watch fireworks, listen to the Boston Pops, and stroll with our loved ones on summer In Boston, the public realm is more than just public days. In this way, the space of mobility is also a space. The public realm encompasses all of the social, cultural, and civic place. A train car is also physical objects that occur on or in streets, path- a living room; a transit station is also a festival ways, rights-of-way, parks, and publicly accessible site; a bus stop is also a monument. Designing for open spaces. When discussing mobility, the public mobility in the city of Boston must include consider- realm includes any public or civic buildings and ation of all the integrally-linked and richly-layered any facilities that provide access to the mobility facets of our collective lives. 1800’S AND EARLY 1900’S QUINCY MARKET THE EMERALD NECKLACE BACK BAY THE GREEN LINE THE CHARLES (1826) (1870) (1880) (1897) RIVER ESPLANADE (STARTED IN 1930’S) Much more than an Back Bay is famous for As the first subway in exquisite greenway, its rows of preserved America, the Green Line the Emerald Necklace 19th-century Victorian not only transformed how symbolically connected brownstone homes, people got around, but many of Boston’s most cultural institutions like redefined the urban land- important places, land- the Boston Public Library, scape by creating spaces scapes, and landmarks. shopping districts like for social activity and Its creation established Newbury Street, and cultural expression at a model for park infra- promenades like its key stops. The con- structure that has been Commonwealth Avenue. struction of the subway emulated worldwide seeded swathes of the since. city for redevelopment and modernization. A GUIDE TO PLACEMAKING FOR MOBILITY A BETTER CITY 7 BOSTON’S PUBLIC REALM DECODING BOSTON’S PUBLIC REALM: A FRAMEWORK OF ANALYSIS Historical Context Boston’s public realm can be analyzed through Boston has a long history of successfully combining a historical lens, but it can also be understood as mobility and public space priorities through trans- a collection of parts. This section will categorize the portation infrastructure investments, and it has components of Boston’s mobility system as either established world-class places with a pioneering places or corridors, and then further into specific spirit. Boston’s public realm legacy was built over typologies. In addition to the role that these spaces many centuries in response to dramatic social, play in transportation, these classifications are economic, and cultural change. This legacy begins based on the human dimension of mobility—or with the city’s founding and early growth in the late what it feels like to be in, or pass through, a space 17th and 18th centuries. Boston Common, Quincy as a pedestrian, bicyclist, or transit rider. Market, and Long Wharf represented significant public investments in our agricultural and maritime The definitions on the following pages are based on economies. However, much of their value to Boston the ways people commonly use the mobility system. over more than three centuries lies in the communal They include places where people access the spirit and civic ambition that shaped them. The greater mobility system, like transit stations and timeline below highlights historic urban endeavors Hubway bicycle rental docks, as well as routes that that helped to shape Boston’s present-day public people take to travel to or between those access realm. points. While these definitions are comprehensive and embody all of the components that make up the MID-1900’S TO EARLY 2000’S THE FREEDOM TRAIL CITY HALL PLAZA PEDESTRIANIZATION SOUTHWEST CORRIDOR PARK THE CENTRAL ARTERY (1951) (1960’S) OF DOWNTOWN (1987) PROJECT AND ROSE KENNEDY CROSSING GREENWAY (2008) Delivering one of the City Hall Plaza, (1979) As a leading example greatest draws in well on its way of transit investment One of the country’s tourism for the city, to incorporating doing much more than largest and most trans- the red brick line of innovative public HARBORWALK conveying passengers, formational single urban the Freedom Trail not realm interventions, (1984) the Southwest Corridor investments, the Big Dig only helps visitors embodies the Park has promoted fine- replaced the elevated find their next desti- aesthetics of its grained, multi-modal Central Artery (I-93) nation, it literally ties building era and mobility at the human for the Rose Kennedy together centuries of continues to host scale and established Greenway, Boston’s historical sites both regional celebrations, a seam that unites grandest boulevard and large and small to tell including musical neighborhoods of the proudest civic space. the story of how our performances and Back Bay and South nation came to be. cultural festivals. End to Jamaica Plain and Roxbury. 8 A BETTER CITY A GUIDE TO PLACEMAKING FOR MOBILITY FIGURE 1: When we think about mobility we don’t always think about how the spaces we use to get around the city make people feel.