June 30, 2000
Guarding the Public Realm at City Hall Plaza
City Hall Plaza: Whose Will It Be?
City Hall Plaza is a puzzle reflecting Americans' ambivalence about public space in cities. In the current urban "revitalization," the Plaza is coming under new management. The Trust for City Hall Plaza, a group of private businesses, is sponsoring its re-design, and will assume a key role in its future.
To date, attention has focused on the architectural aspects of the design. Other issues, however, need examination, to assure the public character of City Hall Plaza.
First: The premise of the new plan is that the City will give public parkland to a private developer, whose excess profits will support the programming and maintenance that the City feels are important but is not prepared to provide. Thus, a 300-room hotel and 500-car garage are the linchpin of the proposal, and the Plaza's fate depends on their financial success. Taxpayers are becoming partners in this enterprise, investing our most precious assets, our land and our public space. Is this investment supported by a comparative analysis of options? And will money spent this way make the Plaza what the Mayor wanted, "a place to bring us all together" ?
Second: City Hall Plaza is public open space, like the Common or the Public Garden, not a typical Boston Redevelopment Authority development parcel. What is the proper public process for converting parkland to redevelopment land? What are the implications of redefining the Plaza as a public-private development project, and what precedents will it set for the future?
Third: How is policy being set to protect the "public" character of the Plaza in the future? When it is the front yard of an upscale hotel, managed by a group of investors, how will civil rights be protected vis a vis property rights? And when the Plaza depends on the financial success of nearby businesses, how will we prevent its gradual conversion into a marketing device, a property enhancement asset, free of "undesirable" people, festooned with banners sporting corporate logos, advertisements on the proposed electronic billboards? Who will make future decisions about design, security, access, further commercial development?
One of the responsibilities of government is to provide for the public realm, not only as an amenity but as an arena for democratic and open social interaction. Maintenance of the public realm is not just about cleaning and planting. It is management of our civil society, reflecting and shaping our notions of community. Government, which is accountable for maintaining order in a public realm of open access, diversity and social equity, is withdrawing from this role.
The private sector, less encumbered by such obligations, is stepping in to fill the vacuum. Our citizens, resigned to government disengagement, are ready to entrust corporations with custodianship of the public realm; privatization is seen as the cure for bureaucratic and budgetary ills. But before we invite solvent corporate knights to rescue our public spaces in distress, we should understand the implications of a trickle-down public realm.
Public space, in corporate hands, has become commercialized, programmed, controlled, sanitized, nostalgified, and socially and aesthetically homogenized, as we see in Quincy Market. Access is usually controlled in subtle ways, despite legal commitments to keep access "public." As business is concerned with upscale clients, the design of public spaces is conceived to attract them to the exclusion of others. Notably, the car dominates the "walking city," to accommodate a class of people who disdain public transit, and as well to generate additional parking profits for the public space that has been "adopted." The Plaza proposal includes (despite Boston's parking freeze) a 500-car garage, served by a grand auto court at Congress Street, and a "restoration of historic Hanover Street" -- as a service drive for the hotel.
It is simply not realistic, in view of past experience, to expect commercial interests, no matter how civic-minded and well-intentioned, to treat the public realm in the way that the government must. Therefore, this venture needs active public participation in a "check-and-balance" system, which can direct corporate resources and initiative within a civic framework rather than a commercial one. Before the Requests for Proposal go out, before the design team goes further, a Citizens' Board of Directors should be established to oversee design and administration.
City Hall Plaza was once the home of a lively neighborhood, swept away, like the West End, by urban renewal's reign of terror. Scollay Square was sacrificed "to give Boston a new civic square, a new focus of community pride and activity." We have a special obligation to this place; let's be sure we don't destroy it to save it.
Shirley Kressel