Michelle: So we are talking about 150 years ago and the project of filling in happened over many phases. There is a really good book by Nancy Seashells called (???) Brown that writes about every project of filling the land and how it happened over time for the South Bay, South End, Back Bay area. Each one of them happened in a slightly different time period. I would say that after all that happened, the project of building these houses, they did not happen at once. There are some photographs that show part of the square built and part of it as missing teeth and I don’t know what order that happened and when exactly that happened. There is a writer called Ross Lopez who writes really interesting stuff about the history of South End but I don’t know if he will have the fine grained information.
Carol: There is a South End collection at the Public Library at the south end branch of it. They probably have a lot of stuff you are talking about and some other stuff as well.
Michelle: The historians that work there are a little protective of that. They have everything put away behind locked doors so you have to ask to get the permission. In terms of what happened. There were long periods of time when nothing major happened to the physical environment but there were a lot of changes to the demographic of the neighborhood. The history is out there.
Carol: The history is one way of looking at it and it is really intriguing. Another way of looking at it is what Michelle and another architect Patricia who lives in the square have been looking at which is “How is the park used and how we would like it to used”. When it was built, it was to attract people from suburbs to live here.
Lloyd: It was to attract people from Beacon Hill because Beacon Hill was filled up.
Carol: So it was a public work investment.
Michelle: So it was built to attract rich people to come and live in mansions here but that did not happen(??). The South End historic society has some pictures of some of the houses that were like that but that was a very short period of time like 20 to 30 years and then it turned more into boarding houses and things like that as they got divided up. So it did not live up to the aspirations for very long and then it went through a period of conflict you can say because the city considered it a bad neighborhood but people lived here, this is their home. So I think there were some who appreciated it and maybe the people who did appreciate it did not have the power to do anything about it and so that is how it kind of ended up becoming a major highway.
Carol: So to return from the history, we all love it and studies have a lot of it and other people do too. But we are also concerned about what is here today and we can do to support the best of it. So if you look at the use, originally it was used as an urban oasis so people will come here from blocks away for a walk and it was very different from what it is now. There was also transportation, but the transportation was this only this carriageway on both sides. The centerpiece did not exist, and the trolleys actually did not go down Mass Ave, the public transportation went down Northampton street, the next street, and so if you looked at the transit network at that time, that would be interesting to see the evolution of transportation in the space and to what it is now and what it might be. Look at the city’s transportation plan right now, they say there will have bus lanes here in few years which is great but how is this working or how is this progressing for each of the elements of our societies here which are changing at the same time. So now we have 6 lanes of traffic, 8 sidewalks(4 on each side including the 2 inside the park), 2 bike lanes, no bus lanes and 6 lanes of parking. So, in terms of data, I think that is really interesting and the 6 lanes of parking and looking into the productivity of those interesting. So sidewalks carries this many pedestrian but it also serves as a meeting space so when I run into Michelle here we have a conversation or just like the meeting we are having. So we don’t do that if the side walks are not here. The parking lanes, they do have a purpose like if I did have a car I could store things when I don’t have space in the house. But it is not nearly as publicly as productive as travel use which are carrying passengers and then the travel lanes carrying a single passenger vehicle are not as productive as a bus which is carrying say 60 passengers or even 15 passengers. These are all very interesting from a data perspective. On the park, you can look at who's there. I came here this morning and there was no one there but I connected with nature. But what I also saw was some trash on the bench, a cosmetic cream of some kind, a cigarette pack and something else that did not seem what we use in the park or remember what it was. Then I walked around the fountain and I saw at least a dozen needles, alcohol containers.
Michelle: I believe the city of Boston keeps track of how many of the needles are reported. In the 311 system, it is an app that people use to report things like I reported an overturned trashcan yesterday. So it is an app that you can use to write a report about trash or say a sign that fell etc. There are different kinds of reports and one of them is needle cleanup so if people see needles which are becoming very common because of the opiary crisis. There is a lot drug use in public space and people leave the needles in public space which is dangerous for the kids and whatever. Some people pick them up on their own risk and some parks have installed boxes to put them into and the city picks them up.
You can also probably request data on the trash reports because they keep the data of reported trash. They use the data to respond to the reports but I believe they are also storing the data. You can probably find records on atleast the ones that are reported and look for patterns or change in behavior or something like that.
Carol: And you can also do observation, like today I did an observation for 5 minutes. You can come up here and try to identify what you see in whatever category (trash disposal, activity etc).
Prasant: What do you think are the challenges?
Michelle: I think there are challenges that are not exclusive to this block, I think national. Obviously we are living in an area that is intense.
Carol: So Boston Medical Center is down here and they have a large amount of activity related to people who are homeless and traditionally it has offered healthcare to people who cannot afford it. So anyone can come here and get healthcare and so I think related to that it has attracted a lot of people without resources and with chronic social problems or whatever. There is also this another institution called Healthcare for the homeless and then also I guess because of the area, there is an industrial area on that and so that area is like an dumping ground for facilities that other neighborhoods do not want to accept. So we have a lot of people here with mental health issues, drug use etc. and what that means is that we have a lot of people with a lot of burdens and not enough resources and many of whom are on the streets and has no place to go.
Michelle: Yes and those places do not keep them. It is not like you can hang out here in the day. It is usually that they get treated and are then out on the streets with nowhere to go. Public places are the only places where they do not get kicked out.
Carol: And because of that population, that sometimes attracts other populations that wants to prey on them, say steal from them or sell to them.
Michelle: The police has records on any kinds of reports on drug dealing, people that pass out and all those kinds of things.
Lloyd: We should not ignore the problems that are faced by people who live here. There is not a lot of integration. This is a fairly disparate neighborhood- moneywise, race wise. You don’t see poor people socializing with wealthy people who live here.
Prasant suggests we go with the needle use direction and Carol says she knows a pharmacist who is also a researcher and has done a lot of work related to it. Michelle pitches in and adds that as interesting as the needle use issue is, she doesn’t think it should be our focus as firstly, this issue is being looked upon closely by other people and also because she does not believe that architecture or visualizations can change people’s behavior or how they behave in a space. Also such solutions are not necessary spatial and since you are looking at space and time, it would not be that useful.
Michelle: From our perspective as a neighborhood, as Lloyd mentioned some of the problems in the neighborhood are very local and we have no support to get that data like how people are using the park, how they are using the parking, the patterns of use in and out etc. That kind of data would actually help us for example develop an argument.
Carol: We want to create a vision for the space, a vision that serves everybody as best as we can. Do we want a protected bike lane here instead of a regular bike lane, do we want bus lanes? If we want bus lanes what do we take away? Do we need all these sidewalks? We have a certain layout now and it seems like it is not ideal. If I were looking at this problem I would look at it from space perspective. Like how many square feet is that house, how much space is infront of the house for nature, access, transport etc. How is that space used and is that kind of optimal? Or is It not and if not what would be optimal? What do people need? SO people are living in smaller and smaller spaces now.
Michelle: Something that I think that we fully don’t understand is the evolution of renters vs house owners here. People who own the whole building vs people who own just a flat vs people who rent from a management company. I think that data is out there but we haven’t fully understood it and how it changed over time.
Carol: There are sources online that will give you some of that. You go to a particular address and it will tell you the number of owners or is it owned by one person. They will tell you who owns the building and if it is 5 people, then it will be a condo and if it is a one owner and it is a single unit, it will tell you how many units are there as well. Also sometimes it is a company.
Michelle:Right now we are meeting with Boston public transportation department, with the chief of streets, with the people from the arts commission and talk about how can we understand the ways to improve placemaking, community making, not how to make Mass Ave more efficient, how to get more cars but how to make this a better space for the people. And they are all very interested in theory but at the end of the day this goes to some traffic engineer who says that I don’t see any traffic constraints, there are so many pedestrians so we are not even going to do that. So sometimes when you come up with data and be like this is what we observed as we are there. And it is hard to make an argument to even make them to look at it and making them spend money on that is another whole issue. But at least for them to look at it and put it in their consideration.
Prasant: Who the users are going to be?
Michelle: So Carol is the resident of the Chester Square Neighbors association is a non-profit organization which basically addresses any community issues, lets say which organizes the residents so that we can tell the city that we want this project , we don’t want that project etc. We are planning to have longer term plans, meeting with city officials to see what can be done here and what they are willing to look at. So we do many activities to try to gather people’s input like what are the problems that people see. I can tell you my opinion but that is just one person.
So we have hunch and anecdotes but we do not have data to prove anything. SO it is helpful to make your case with parks departments, with planners if we have enough data. You have to present data to people to make a convincing case.