Today I went back and revisited an appraisal of the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston. While the Big Dig was widely praised as a linear, connected greeway, Alex Krieger offers some criticism. Boston is much older and larger than Nashville, but I feel that there is much to be learned from this project.
Krieger points to the insight of Jane Jacobs. He argues that the Rose Kennedy Greenway should not have been designed as a single linear park, but that it should have been looked at as seven different parks. As a single linear park, it is severly fragmentated by crossing streets and the presence of access ramps to the highway blow. The site in Nashville will face the same challenges.
He uses the nearby Post Office Square, which is only three blocks from the RKG, as an example. This space has the appropriate development along its fringes and offers users intimacy. “Post Office Square is brilliant not only for its extensive and beautiful planting, and so on a roof of a substantial underground garage, but because it is perfectly sized for a downtown, and its logical users, and very well located.”
Having read Jacobs perspective on urban design, I agree with this idealology. Perhaps this offers insight on how to approach the design of a linear park over I-40 in Nashville. Broadway and Demonbreun both bring six lanes of traffic across the interstate. Division would perhaps be less intimidating to pedestrians with four lanes. There is also Church Street to the North with five lanes and 12th Avenue on the south with four lanes. These streets will likely make it difficult to achieve much linear connectivity. Instead, perhaps viewing each segment as its own moderately scaled square with a mix of uses will be appropriate. The size of each segment is comparable to the size of Post Office Square.
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