I visited my friend in Detroit a few months ago. She told me that she lived a short walk from downtown, and on a bus line. She picked me up at the airport and drove me to her place. I marveled at the sight of her complex: a large, leafy expanse the size of several city blocks. We left the car in a half-empty garage in the center and walked uphill to the apartment building, a tower in a park. A few townhomes lurked below it, but I told her, this can’t be Detroit itself, it has to be some nameless suburb. We took the elevator to her floor and looked out on the skyline. Before me was that expanse of trees and parking spots and scattered townhomes, maybe a half-mile wide, beyond it a trench with a highway running through it, then the skyline of the living, breathing, working city of Detroit, still striving upward, still rebuilding itself from what came before and preparing for what will come after. I asked my friend what had happened here, why there was a highway, green space and a tower on the edge of this city instead of shops, homes, streets and alleyways, even though I knew the answer. “You see,” she said, “this place used to be called Black Bottom.”
During the 1960s, the time of urban renewal and white flight in Boston and beyond, neighborhoods were demolished and de-densified, and many fled to the suburbs. Planners saw America’s middle class embracing a car-oriented culture, one whose aesthetics were defined by the car, wide lawns, prodigious setbacks and iron fences to keep the riffraff out. Planners thought the only way to attract these people back was to re-create these features in cities. Such attempts are seen all over Boston: City Hall’s massive brick moonscape, the leafy yet impenetrable and soulless West End – and while Somerville was largely spared the worst of urban renewal, its effects on planning still changed the way our city looks today.
The “tower in a park” was one of these attempts to imitate the suburban form. The density of a city contained in one or two skyscrapers with the privacy, parking and open space of a suburban lawn. Yet cities are more than just one building, one park, one school. They are ecosystems of many people who move in and interact with a variety of places. Fences, setbacks, sunburned open lawns – these physical barriers separate those who experience the development from within and those who are relegated to the sidewalk.
The creation of an “oasis” from urban life begs the question of why an oasis is needed in the first place. For something to be in and gain from the city’s amenities but not want to be of it is the ultimate affront, since the integration of many buildings and uses is what makes a city a city. If the roads and paths are the veins, buildings are the city’s organs. Empty and underused space drains this lifeblood, as it means the only thing someone can do with the space is travel not through but past it.
This is all to say that when it comes to 90 Washington St. in Somerville, with all the love in my heart and respect for our seniors, 10 acres is big enough for Cobble Hill. For this block to be more than something you pass on your way elsewhere; for there to be shade, children, adults, people walking down the street, something must be built on that parcel. I am honestly open to anything – the city could build a zoo on the available 4 acres if it thought it would make the money back. The MBTA’s green line was not built for its aesthetic appeal. Give us something to travel to.
I’m not sure why the one remaining bid for the site is a stinker. Did the council impose too high of an affordability requirement? Is the developer predicting that anything too tall will get nuked by the neighbors? Is the bank refusing to finance the project without a big parking garage? I’m okay with the city sitting this one out until interest rates come down, but we can’t spend forever with our thumbs planted firmly between our butt cheeks. As it stands, this place is a black hole. The city should find any incentive to get this developed into a real urban area.
Nicholas Marchuk is a local author and engineer. His work is available at major retailers and on his website, nicholasmarchuk.com. Comments and questions can be directed to his contact form and may be responded to in this publication.
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