MassDebate: Big Dig: Money Pit or Major Progress?

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Perhaps no other subject in Boston has been written about more than the Big Dig, at least not recently. From bankruptcy to leaks to pensions to lawsuits, the hugely expensive Big Dig has cost more in headaches, heartaches, time, and even plain ol' money than Massachusetts ever expected. Still, some--especially those who remember what it was like before the Dig--maintain that it's brought something positive to the city despite all its costs.

John Hanson Mitchell, author of The Paradise of All These Parts: A Natural History of Boston, asserted recently in Beacon Press's Beacon Broadside that there's a lot to "dig" about the Dig, especially when you consider it in light of Boston's history. Below, we present his historically based argument in favor of the much-maligned project.

In spite of skyrocketing budget overruns, delayed construction, floods, ceiling collapses, and all the other ills that big construction projects are prone to, the Big Dig is far better than what used to be there. A short walk along the Rose Kennedy Greenway on a weekend after noon in summer is a case in point--families picnicking, flowers blooming, grass growing, and children sporting under the classical Italianate water spouts.

It's been a while since the Central Artery came down, newcomers to the city may not even remember it, but in my mind, that THING, that veritable Berlin Wall, was the symbol of all that went wrong in this city back in the dark hours of the 1940s and 1950s when auto-crazed urban planners began to construct what they called without a hint of irony, "the New Boston."

... [In the 1950s] [c]ity agencies and the Boston Redevelopment Authority began the usual clearances and improvements. What this meant, generally speaking, was that the neighborhoods of the poor and disenfranchised would be cleared, and the brave new world of the automobile and the corporate high-rise would move in... The poor were moved elsewhere, and a great Soviet-era block known as the Charles River Park arose. Ironically, given the heartless, faceless, cold and sterile look of the structures that replaced the interesting, though squalid, historical buildings, the new high rises won architectural awards... [The plan] worked, and Boston began to regain population.

Following this the great Behemoth of new construction rolled over that nasty hive of depravity and perverse pleasures known as Scollay Square, which for more than a century had provided entertainment for visiting sailor boys and Harvard boys, and in a few cases, the occasional Brahmin male as well. The beast bulldozer cleared the area and in its place created the wind blasted urban desert known as Government Center...

This ingenious work of urban planning effectively cut off the historic North End, cut off the city from the waterfront, and sliced in half the tightly knit Chinese American neighborhood. Not only that, it turned out to be a failure. Layered with centipede-like on and off ramps that spidered down into the city from the elevated highway, it only made downtown traffic heavier. And it got worse decade by decade as the automobile replaced public transportation and traffic expanded to three times the highway's carrying capacity...

It would be hard to argue that banishing cars would be bad for the city. All one has to do is take a walk on the Rose Kennedy Greenway on a summer afternoon to make that point. And it is perhaps hopeful--metaphorically at least--that during the Big Dig phase of highway building, Boston chose to bury the odious automobile underground in tunnels rather than proudly elevate it on high, as was the case in the past."

After the jump, MassDebate presents a love letter from Bostonist to the Big Dig!