News
Shadows, discussion, and intrigue at ’Can Height Make Right?’
by Julie Tompkins
MySouthEnd.com Contributor
Wednesday Jun 17, 2009
"I’m not sure if height is right, but it’s not automatically wrong," said Alex Krieger of the design and planning services firm Chan Krieger Sieniewicz and Harvard Graduate School of Design at the start of the community forum on tall buildings "Can Height Make Right?"
With an increase in high-rise proposals across Boston, four panelists-Krieger, architect/urban designer David Dixon of the firm Goody Clancy, Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) Deputy Director of Urban Design Prataap Patrose, and 9th Suffolk state Rep. Byron Rushing-came together on Wednesday, June 10 at Northeastern University for a discussion of the city’s future.
By the end of the night no specific conclusions about tall buildings in Boston had been reached, though the forum acted more as a way to pacify concerned community members and to motivate them to take a more active role in the planning stages in order to avoid future frustrations.
Even when Krieger led off the discussion by saying "tall buildings should be planned for, not simply opposed," reflecting the evening’s overall message of thought and consideration before snap-judgments, many audience members did not hesitate to express their disgruntled views about tall buildings.
"Fenway is a small, delicate neighborhood. It needs protection from development," one attendee said, before adding that the neighborhood was being encased and choked by the surrounding buildings.
"When I think about tall buildings the first thing I think about is not controversy; I think about people," said Rushing. "I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that the Fenway should be able to decide how much affordable housing it wants. There would be less opposition to tall buildings if the tall buildings served the people."
Throughout the discussion Rushing further emphasized the importance of finding out what works for the people in order to create a more harmonious result.
"We need to create that design that gets beyond the rhetoric of being done ’for the people,’" he said. "It needs to actually be done for them."
Besides liking to look up at these high buildings-a comment that received lots of laughs from the audience-Rushing explained that tall buildings are good for stacking offices.
"I prefer the offices piled up on top of each other rather than spread out taking up room where housing should be," he said.
Rushing also posed questions about wind patterns and the blockage of the sky and sun.
"How much sunshine do we want?" he asked. "It’s a hard question to ask because it is something we take for granted."
Rushing brought these issues to light to stress the fact that they need to be discussed by the community members before any final decisions are made.
"We want the Sunshine Preservation Society and we want you all to join so we can decide how much sunshine we want," joked Rushing, though he later added that it’s harder to get people to come and sit through those kinds of discussions than it is to get people to come for a meeting when they believe too much sunshine has been taken from them.
Although Rushing was full of good humor, the point he was trying to make was clear: the community needs to think about what it wants and doesn’t want from tall buildings to avoid being disappointed and aggravated with the results.
Patrose said that the immediate reaction to tall buildings "is often negative because the original tall buildings weren’t very well-built."
Dixon was of the same opinion, saying that "there are cities where this isn’t an issue because they do a better job."
Despite past poor performances, Dixon appears confident that developers now have the experience to make tall buildings better and that "development will bring tremendous value to our city."
"It’s not worth doing if we can’t figure out how to do it well," he added, insinuating developers now know how to build correctly.
Dixon also pointed to a changing city creating the need for more high-rise towers.
"We are a transformed society. The number of people who want to live in towers is going to rise in the coming years," he said.
Dixon said that 60-to-70 percent of the housing demand today is from single people and couples without children, and they want to live in cities and high-rises. The majority of the demand used to be from families with children who wanted to live in neighborhoods, but now they make up less than twenty percent of society, he said.
In today’s society "people will not walk if there aren’t interesting things to walk by," said Dixon, adding that tall buildings could bring life to small shops and restaurants and create more business.
Another issue posed by an audience member was the lack of confidence community members have about the follow-through and enforcement on city projects.
"Neighborhoods that are clear about what they want are very influential in what is achieved," responded Dixon, emphasizing that the community and developers, as well as the city and government, need to come together and become active partners in order for real decisions to be made.
Krieger said that a community needs to prepare for the present in order to be able to take it on, and since today’s society is very pro-urban, tall buildings can help to support and shape Boston’s next chapter.
So can height make right? Perhaps, according to Rushing.
"I see tall buildings as simply a function of having people live more livable lives, having communities be more creative," he said.
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