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Boston Planning And Development Agency
The Boston Planning & Development Agency (BPDA), formerly the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), is a Massachusetts public agency that serves as the municipal planning and development agency for Boston, working on both housing and commercial developments. As an agency concerned with urban planning, the BPDA does not consider requests for zoning variances from individual property owners. These are heard by the city's own Zoning Board of Appeals, a seven-person body appointed by the Mayor of Boston. Some consider the BPDA's roles as both real estate owner and developer, and approval authority over private development projects, to be a conflict of interest. Projects One of the first projects the BRA took on was the demolition of the West End of Boston, in an infamous urban renewal project that generated a considerable negative reaction locally and across the country. At the same time, nineteenth-century buildings around Scollay Square were demolished to make way for the new ...
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Urban Planning
Urban planning (also called city planning in some contexts) is the process of developing and designing land use and the built environment, including air, water, and the infrastructure passing into and out of urban areas, such as transportation, communications, and distribution networks, and their accessibility. Traditionally, urban planning followed a top-down approach in master planning the physical layout of human settlements. The primary concern was the public welfare, which included considerations of efficiency, sanitation, protection and use of the environment, as well as taking account of effects of the master plans on the social and economic activities. Over time, urban planning has adopted a focus on the social and environmental "bottom lines" that focuses on using planning as a tool to improve the health and well-being of people and maintain sustainability standards. In the early 21st century, urban planning experts such as Jane Jacobs called on urban planners to take ...
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Huntington Avenue
Huntington Avenue is a thoroughfare in the city of Boston, Massachusetts, beginning at Copley Square and continuing west through the Back Bay, Fenway, Longwood, and Mission Hill neighborhoods. It is signed as Massachusetts Route 9 (formerly Route C9). A section of Huntington Avenue has been officially designated the Avenue of the Arts by the city of Boston. Description In the Back Bay neighborhood, the avenue is primarily dominated by the Mother Church and headquarters of the Church of Christ, Scientist, and the buildings of the Prudential Center shopping and office complex. The middle portion of Huntington Avenue designated the "Avenue of the Arts" is lined by many significant artistic venues and educational institutions in Boston, including Symphony Hall, Horticultural Hall, the New England Conservatory, Northeastern University, the Huntington Avenue Theatre (Huntington Theatre Company's mainstage), the Museum of Fine Arts, Wentworth Institute of Technology, and ...
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Massachusetts General Court
The Massachusetts General Court, formally the General Court of Massachusetts, is the State legislature (United States), state legislature of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts located in the state capital of Boston. The name "General Court" is a holdover from the earliest days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, when the colonial assembly, in addition to making laws, sat as a judicial Appellate court, court of appeals. Before the adoption of the state constitution in 1780, it was called the Great and General Court, but the official title was shortened by John Adams, author of the Massachusetts Constitution, state constitution. It is a bicameral Legislature, body. The upper house is the Massachusetts Senate which is composed of 40 members. The Lower house, lower body, the Massachusetts House of Representatives, has 160 members; until 1978, the state house had 240 members. It meets in the Massachusetts State House on Beacon Hill, Boston, Beacon Hill in Bosto ...
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Northeastern University
Northeastern University (NU or NEU) is a private university, private research university with its main campus in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It was founded by the Boston Young Men's Christian Association in 1898 as an all-male institute before being incorporated as Northeastern College in 1916, gaining university status in 1922. With more than 38,000 students, Northeastern is the largest university in Massachusetts by enrollment. It is a large, highly residential university which is composed of ten colleges, including the Northeastern University School of Law. The university's main campus in Boston is located within the center of the city along Huntington Avenue and Columbus Avenue (Boston), Columbus Avenue near the Fenway–Kenmore and Roxbury, Boston, Roxbury neighborhoods. It offers undergraduate and graduate programs, and most undergraduates participate in a cooperative education program. Northeastern is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Educatio ...
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Harvard University
Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyman John Harvard (clergyman), John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Its influence, wealth, and rankings have made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Harvard was founded and authorized by the Massachusetts General Court, the governing legislature of Colonial history of the United States, colonial-era Massachusetts Bay Colony. While never formally affiliated with any Religious denomination, denomination, Harvard trained Congregationalism in the United States, Congregational clergy until its curriculum and student body were gradually secularized in the 18th century. By the 19th century, Harvard emerged as the most prominent academic and cultural institution among the Boston B ...
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Emerald Necklace
The Emerald Necklace consists of a chain of parks linked by parkways and waterways in Boston and Brookline, Massachusetts. It was designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, and gets its name from the way the planned chain appears to hang from the "neck" of the Boston peninsula. In 1989, the Emerald Necklace was designated as a Boston Landmark by the Boston Landmarks Commission. Overview The Necklace comprises half of the City of Boston's park acreage, parkland in the Town of Brookline, and parkways and park edges under the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. More than 300,000 people live within its watershed area. From Boston Common to Franklin Park it is approximately seven miles by foot or bicycle through the parks. The Emerald Necklace includes: * Boston Common * Public Garden * Commonwealth Avenue Mall * The Fens * Forsyth Park * The Riverway * Olmsted Park * Jamaica Pond * Jamaicaway * Arborway * Arnold Arboretum * Franklin Pa ...
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The Dorchesterway
The Dorchesterway was a parkway planned by 19th century landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted to be a continuation of the Emerald Necklace park network in Boston, Massachusetts. This plan, however, was never implemented. History Olmsted's vision The Emerald Necklace, as extant today, has a sort of "L" shape. It starts at the Boston Common near Downtown Crossing and extends out to the Arnold Arboretum (which starts in Forest Hills but has portions in Roslindale near the West Roxbury border). It then changes direction back inwards as the Arboretum connects via the Arborway to Franklin Park. Olmsted wanted the Emerald Necklace to continue via the Dorchesterway to the shore of Boston Harbor's Dorchester Bay and thus form a "U" shape. He intended Columbia Road in Dorchester and the Strandway (the southern roadway of which is now known as William J. Day Boulevard) in South Boston to connect South Boston's Marine Park and Pleasure Bay to the network of natural-looking green sp ...
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Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted (April 26, 1822 – August 28, 1903) was an American landscape architect, journalist, Social criticism, social critic, and public administrator. He is considered to be the father of landscape architecture in the United States. Olmsted was famous for co-designing many well-known urban parks with his partner Calvert Vaux. Olmsted and Vaux's first project was Central Park in New York City, which led to many other urban park designs. These included Prospect Park (Brooklyn), Prospect Park in Brooklyn; Cadwalader Park in Trenton, New Jersey; and Forest Park (Portland, Oregon), Forest Park in Portland, Oregon. In 1883, Olmsted established the preeminent landscape architecture and planning consultancy of the late 19th-century United States, which was carried on and expanded by his sons, Frederick Jr. and John C., under the name Olmsted Brothers. Other projects that Olmsted was involved in include the country's first and oldest coordinated system of public ...
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Open Space Reserve
An open space reserve (also called open space preserve, open space reservation, and green space) is an area of protected or conservation ethics, conserved land or water on which Real estate development, development is indefinitely set aside. The purpose of an open space reserve may include the Historic preservation, preservation or Conservation (ethic), conservation of a community or region's rural natural or historic character; the conservation or preservation of a land or water area for the sake of outdoor recreation, recreational, Ecology, ecological, environment (biophysical), environmental, aesthetics, aesthetic, or agriculture, agricultural interests; or the management of a community or region's growth management, growth in terms of development, industry, or natural resources extraction. Open space reserves may be Urban open space, urban, suburban, or rural; they may be actual designated areas of land or water, or they may be zoning districts or overlays where development is ...
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Dorchester, Massachusetts
Dorchester () is a Neighborhoods in Boston, neighborhood comprising more than in the city of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Originally, Dorchester was a separate town, founded by Puritans who emigrated in 1630 from Dorchester, Dorset, England, to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This Municipal annexation in the United States, dissolved municipality, Boston's largest neighborhood by far, is often divided by city planners in order to create two planning areas roughly equivalent in size and population to other Boston neighborhoods. The neighborhood is named after the town of Dorchester in Dorset, from which History of the Puritans in North America, Puritans emigrated to the New World on the ship ''Mary and John'', among others. Founded in 1630, just a few months before the founding of the city of Boston, Dorchester now covers a geographic area approximately equivalent to nearby Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge.
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Fort Point Channel
Fort Point Channel is a maritime channel adjacent to Boston, Massachusetts. The channel separates South Boston from Downtown Boston and feeds into Boston Harbor. The channel is surrounded by the Fort Point neighborhood, which is also named after the same colonial-era fort. History The south part of Fort Point Channel has been gradually filled in for use by the South Bay rail yard and several highways (specifically the Central Artery and the Southeast Expressway). At its south end, the channel once widened into South Bay, from which the Roxbury Canal continued southwest where the Massachusetts Avenue Connector is now. The Boston Tea Party occurred at its northern end. The banks of the channel are still busy with activity. South of Summer Street on the west side of the channel is a large United States Postal Service facility. A large parcel, home to Gillette, lies at the southeast corner of the channel. The back of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston building looks over ...
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Big Dig (Boston, Massachusetts)
The Big Dig was a megaproject in Boston that rerouted the then elevated Central Artery of Interstate 93 that cut across Boston into the O'Neill Tunnel and built the Ted Williams Tunnel to extend Interstate 90 to Logan International Airport. Those two projects were the origin of the official name, the Central Artery/Tunnel Project (CA/T Project). The project constructed the Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge over the Charles River, created the Rose Kennedy Greenway in the space vacated by the previous I-93 elevated roadway, and funded more than a dozen projects to improve the region's public transportation system. Planning for the project began in 1982. Construction work was carried out between 1991 and 2006. The project concluded in December 2007. The project's general contractor was Bechtel, with Parsons Brinckerhoff as the engineers, who worked as a consortium, both overseen by the Massachusetts Highway Department. The Big Dig was the most expensive highway project in the United S ...
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