Old Boston, new Boston: a work in progress
By Noel C. Paul
| Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
BOSTON –
Between the city's gleaming financial district and red-bricked North End, just a few hundred yards from the site of next week's Democratic National Convention, unused pipes and palettes of wood litter block after block of city streets.
They are probably the most famous construction leftovers in the world.
For a city desperately working, even now, to put on a Sunday polish for a week of national attention, these reminders of the historically expensive and divisive Big Dig are alarmingly visible.
During the convention, the city will point to the near-complete megaproject as a symbol of a visionary "New Boston," a city that is brainy, innovative, progressive, and tolerant - part Athens, part Silicon Valley, part Greenwich Village.
But that's just one side of Boston's persona, and the Dig also symbolizes flaws in this city's character - from neighborhood turf wars to political cronyism that critics cite as a factor behind the project's huge cost overruns.
And beneath all that, the Dig encapsulates in 2004 a tension that has characterized this city since colonial days: the struggle between tradition and innovation.
That tension emerged as soon as the Puritans debated how best to retain the purity of their holy experiment amid the influence of commercial trade and modern comforts.
A fateful intensity, it seems, has always characterized Bostonians' struggle to shape their city. As John Winthrop, the city's first leader wrote, Boston was meant to be a "city upon a hill," an example for the world.
Today this metropolis, arguably more than any other major US city, still wrestles with how to preserve its historic character and close-knit neighborhoods while also striving for the elusive prize of being a world-class city.
As delegates gather next week, literally in the shadow of Boston's new answer to the Golden Gate Bridge, this is the context of Boston's 2004 biography.
"I think we're really at a crossroads," says Robert David Sullivan, associate editor of CommonWealth magazine. "Boston is divided between people who want it to become a dynamic world-class city, and those who want it to retain its small, local character."
The Big Dig was designed to cut through the tangle of outmoded highways and under the archaic maze of winding streets, allowing Boston's business to flow at 21st-century volume and velocity.
The Dig's tunnels and suspension bridges have eased congestion somewhat. And the project paves the way for a new greenspace, where trendy shops and luxury condos may prosper.
But this is all part of a longstanding, and often controversial process. As the city has welcomed an influx of urban chic in recent years, many believe the city's modest, working-class character could vanish.
Mayor Menino as symbol and a force
Many of Boston's contradictions are embodied in its mayor, Thomas Menino, a quintessential city boss whose bearing seems more suited to construction than the capital.
Mayor Menino is from the neighborhood of Hyde Park, and "Da Mayor" has established his political base, block by block, among the working class.
Yet Menino is clearly trying to forge a legacy based on big ideas. It was under his watch, after all, that the Dig seemed to near completion, and he remains the steward over hundreds of real-estate projects sprouting across the city.
He's also a salesman who spends much of his time wooing engines of the information economy, of which Boston, he argues, is the vital part. The city leads the nation in major hospitals, medical schools, and biotechnology firms. In recent years, Boston has attracted more funds from the National Institutes of Health than any other city.
And then there's Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the 70 other colleges and universities that call Boston home - and pump $5 billion into the local economy each year. On this plane, Boston can be compared to history's great centers of learning - a modern-day Alexandria, nestled by an East Coast bay.
Of course, life-sciences jobs go to those who wear surgical scrubs, not blue collars. And it's the working class that, despite an old-boy-network of neighborhood pols, increasingly feels left behind. One example: a key city police union is set to picket outside the convention hall next week because of low salaries.
State budget cuts in the arts, education, and public health have hit Boston's poor particularly hard, leaving the city with fewer resources to fight drug addiction and homelessness.
The consequence, say public-health advocates, is a startling ratio of 5 black infant deaths to every 1 white infant death - twice the national discrepancy. In Mattapan, a primarily low-income, minority neighborhood, median household income has fallen 17 percent, to $32,000, since 1990.
The engines of neighborhood change
For the most part, local disaffection stems from a surge in redevelopment. In Chinatown, for instance, anticipation of the new Rose F. Kennedy Greenway has sent real estate prices soaring, and longtime residents worry about the phasing out of institutions they've known for generations.
"Buildings that were right on the edges of the [interstate] were "C" class," says Robert Brown, a partner with the Boston architecture firm CBT. "Now these same buildings have become ideal for new residents."
Major forces of change are sweeping through virtually all of the city's tight-knit neighborhoods: For the first time, more than half of Boston residents are minorities, drawn by service jobs in universities, hospitals, hotels, and restaurants.
In the East Boston neighborhood, for instance, an influx of Cape Verdians, Brazilians, and Haitians are changing the makeup of formerly Irish and Italian schools and parishes. The last decade saw the white population here drop by 26 percent, becoming just half of the overall population. Meanwhile, the Hispanic population has more than doubled.
But this historically divided city is in some ways growing more tolerant. And for all its images of discord, there are built-in shock absorbers here to help overcome its gulfs.
Several East Boston organizations have gone out of their way to welcome leaders of the Brazilian community into their ranks, a show of respect that would have been unheard of a century ago, says Boston City Councilor Felix Arroyo, whose own election last year was a historic act of unity. While Latinos represent 13 percent of the city's population, half of them are too young to vote, and half of those who
are old enough are not yet US citizens. Nevertheless, a coalition of moderates, liberals, Latinos, blacks, gays, and lesbians, along with liberal and moderate whites, banded together to elect Mr. Arroyo, who was born in Puerto Rico, to an at-large position on the council.
"In the past, all ethnic groups had to wait until they could elect their own [officials]," he says. "My election shows that it's a very different Boston."
Page 1 of 2 |
Next page:
The tale of South Boston
|
RSS feed