The new "One Davis Square"

[billharnois.livejournal.com]

Here's what the new One Davis Square building will look like in Fall 2007.

Comments

Re: No comparison with Davis and Porter Squares

[chumbolly.livejournal.com]

Okay, I see I've been inartful in dissing Porter Square--to clarify, the urban design of Porter Square sucks, but yes, it's chock full of good shops and restaurants. But your point that Porter and Davis are apples and oranges is exactly my point. Porter and Davis used to be very much alike, though Porter was much more of a marketplace. That parking lot used to be small blocks of streets. In some respects, Porter should be the much more urban of the two squares. It has subway and commuter rail access, and it's on Mass Ave. But that parking lot and it's strip mall design foul it up. As Ron could surely attest, that could have happened in Davis as well.

And speaking as someone who went to Tufts in the early 90s when students almost never ventured into Davis, I can say that Davis was not built around the needs of a university, or for that matter, public transit. Tufts, as an institution, pretty much ignored Davis until the last decade. When the T came in the 80s, the MBTA wanted to demolish a ton of buildings and put in parking lots, just like Porter. People fought that tooth and nail. The point being, Davis didn't just happen. It was built up during a time when cars didn't reign supreme, and it's buildings and streetscape were preserved by a long, slow decline that kept new development from happening. Then, when people saw what could happen when the public space is designed around cars as was done in Porter, they wised up and fought parking.

Re: No comparison with Davis and Porter Squares

[ron_newman]

Actually, no, the Porter Square shopping center and its parking lot were a large, single-family property, the Rand Estate, with no streets inside at all.

To some extent, Davis Square did evolve around the needs of public transit, long before the Red Line arrived in 1984. Until 1926, B&M commuter trains stopped right in the middle of the Square. Even after that ended, streetcars continued running, on more or less the present bus routes.