-Commentary-
Here is the bait from the City website: “The City of Boston Parks and Recreation Department is working in partnership with the Environment Department to create a comprehensive long-term plan, which balances recreational needs and community gathering spaces, with protection against climate-change impacts such as flooding from increased rainfall and sea level rise. Our first stop in the vision process is reaching out to you. Let us know what your vision is for Moakley Park by attending a meeting or filling out the survey.”
Yet again, the government is looking to exploit the South Boston community by high jacking another resource that this community has worked hard to preserve, ever mindful of the sense of place that the neighborhood has always offered its families. In the face of the scornful characterization of its residents over many, many years, shamelessly, everyone NOW wants another piece of what was painstakingly protected.
The streets, the waterfront, the beaches, institutions like the schools and churches, the parade, the traditions, the commerce, the air space, the sunlight have all been systematically targeted. Now, under the marketing ruse of environmental preparedness in the wake of climate change, Moakley Park, albeit a public park, is now in their sights.
It is called a ‘vision process’. What in the world does that mean. It means that city planners, bored to tears dealing with residential projects, now have a designer’s playground – pun intended – to give their right-brain logic a rest, and exercise their left-brain creativity. Just what we need, they say.
Here are the planners/designers at play.
Design team presentations were presented by:
- Coastal Carpet by Balinbin
- Game On by Warner Larson + Nitsh Engineering
- Let’s Get Wet by 321GO
- Look Both Ways by MASS Design Group
- Mixing Ground by STOSS + Continuum
- Bridging the Gap by Cannon Design
- Park to Pier by Crosby Schlessinger Smallridge
- Resurgence by CDM Smith
- Room for Everyone by Woodard and Curran
- Urban Ecotone by Copley Wolff Design Group
- Working Tidal by CBA Landscape Architects
Details of each can be found at this website when you click on the links: https://www.boston.gov/departments/parks-and-recreation/moakley-park-vision-plan#groups-we-039-re-working-with
The first community meetings were held already. The most recent was held at the Tierney Learning Center on July 19 2018. No other meeting has been planned according to the website. Nonetheless, if folks are truly interested and want to learn more, then speak up and ask your city councilors for another meeting with a more open agenda that includes the issues of usage preferences, grandfathering South Boston’s perennial sporting and recreational events and the ever-looming state of public safety, especially related to the reported drug use in the park and its discarded paraphernalia.
Human behavior change should be addressed first; concerns over climate change can come later.
