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Scholarly Research

Boston's New Urban Ring: An Antidote to Fragmentation

George Thrush
New_Urban_Ring_1996.doc
Published: ACSA Proceedings, 1996 04/01/1996

The premise of this paper is that clear spatial order and hierarchy are necessary if we are to attain meaningful social, political, and cultural diversity in our cities; and in the space between them and the suburbs. We should not expect that simply because buildings look different from one another, and because the landscape between them seems fractured and uncontrolled, that we are representing the heterogeneity that today is taken in architectural discourse to be synonymous with political pluralism. We are not. Our contemporary urban and suburban landscape is often a homogeneous assemblage of meaningless commercial difference. If we want a heterogeneous landscape capable of representing real differences in culture, politics, and social order, we need, paradoxically, a strong, centered, spatial order that can lend hierarchy to public life. What follows is a proposal to transform the metropolitan area centered on Boston, MA into just such a meaningfully heterogeneous landscape by means of an urban design strategy called the New Urban Ring.

Research Topics:

• Post-Industrial Landscape and Urbanism
• Sustainable Design