Now that Boston's Big Dig is officially complete, will the promised changes in the quality of the urban fabric be delivered? Or will it only benefit the experience of those driving through?
From the article;
Jerold Kayden, a professor of urban planning and design at Harvard, said that the parks lacked boldness and creativity and that the corridor remained “an urban void.” It might have been more interesting, Professor Kayden said, to leave the highway intact as an elevated park like the planned High Line, formerly a railway, on the West Side of Manhattan.

“One would be hard-pressed to say this is a creative, cohesive, singular public space that will redefine the city of Boston,” he said. “And that is too bad, when you have that much space.”

Others say the space merely needs to evolve, and that in time, the greenway and the development that rises alongside it will have the same impact that filling in the Back Bay — formerly tidewater flats along the Charles River, now one of Boston’s most upscale neighborhoods — did more than a century ago.

NYT