March 11, 2013 Connect Historic Boston links Point A and Point B with a New Look at History and Design
City of Boston transportation planner Addy Smith-Reiman continues her update on the activities and events surrounding the new initiative of the Menino administration and the National Park Service that will link the ferry, bus, T and Hubway to historic sites throughout downtown.
How would you call attention to public transportation and historic sites? Can you engage and activate the streets, infrastructure, stations, waterways, sites and even transportation itself, enhancing the experience of moving through the city?
Connect Historic Boston?s team of planners, urban designers and engineers are creating preliminary concepts that may appear to only link Point A to Point B ? but there is a whole host of opportunities to discover the urban fabric in-between. Through a variety of outreach programs, Connect Historic Boston is engaging different age groups to consider what connecting to their historic city means.
We are working in partnership with Learning By Design and DiscoverRoxbury to create elementary school based-curriculum linking the historic sites of the Dudley Square Neighborhood and the gateway to downtown historic sites via the Silver Line.
Partnering with The Boston Harbor Association, through a grant from the Boston Foundation for Architecture, we are developing a series of History Pin tours that peel back the many layers of Boston?s changing waterfront and transit modes. Interns from both Connect Historic Boston and the Boston Harbor Association are collecting image datasets and creating visual ?tours? that will be launched in early June.Steve Glazer, of Poetics of Place,and members from our Advisory and Inter-agency Groups have been working to develop a Quest created around the theme ?revolutions? in transportation history.
And lastly, partnering with The New England Foundation for theArts, The Community Design Resource Center, The Boston Society of Architects, The LivableStreets Alliance and the Boston Arts Commission we are holding a college and university student Public Art Ideas Competition to engage and activate the street networks, transportation modes and links to historic sites throughout downtown Boston.
With a scope that is broad and far-reaching, we are creating outreach programs that relate to transportation, movement and place. As the Connect Historic Boston initiative moves along (pun intended) ? each activity will produce a product that will enhance our mission that taking the T, walking and biking to historic sites is fun and easy, convenient and accessible, with many opportunities for discovery along the way.