The Hub's metropolis: greater Boston's development from railroad suburbs to smart growth

Abstract

The Hub's Metropolis: Greater Boston's Development from Railroad Suburbs to Smart Growth. James C. O'Connell. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2013. 326 pages. $36.95 (hardcover).Boston-based National Park Service planner James O'Connell has produced a worthy and thoughtful addition to the illustrious succession of studies of Boston's urban development. His emphasis extends beyond the traditional accounts of Boston's physical expansion by making land or absorbing formerly independent municipalities to describe the growth of an immense metropolitan region around the city's historic core. The focus is on the territory covered by the Boston Metropolitan Area Planning Council, which serves 101 cities and towns inside the I-495 beltway, but later expands to consider the Boston Combined Statistical Area, which includes a chunk of southern New Hampshire as well as a larger portion of Massachusetts.O'Connell divides the region's suburban into nine distinct but overlapping phases, beginning in 1800 (prior to 1800, nothing resembling suburbia existed). Each model left some imprint on the landscape, and each chapter of the book concludes with an exploring section, which presents characteristic examples of that period. There is also a general Exploring the Metropolitan Landscape appendix, enabling readers to organize an itinerary, or at least train themselves to view the cultural landscape with a more discerning eye.Proto-suburban development can be discerned as villages expanded and coalesced between 1800 and 1820, but there were no real Boston suburbs until after 1820. Some wealthy individuals began a movement to suburbia, hoping to achieve a pastoral Arcadia. This kind of was inherently limited by the small number of participants and by transportation constraints.Railroad builders of the 1830s intended to develop the business of Boston's hinterland and beyond, but likely did not anticipate the rise of the railroad commuter. Nevertheless, within ten years, that now-familiar character had appeared and true suburban was launched. The linear growth that railroads inevitably inspired became even more pronounced as streetcars-first horsedrawn, then electric-formed highly visible streetcar suburbs.Brookline's rejection of annexation by Boston in 1874 was portentous, as it meant that continuing suburban expansion would encompass numerous jurisdictions with divergent interests. Later attempts to form a single regional government, building on successful defined-purpose authorities such as the Metropolitan Park System, ultimately failed.The book highlights the sometimesoverlooked role of Frederick Law Olmsted in advocating suburbs as an ideal way of life. He put his theories into action by planning the widening of Beacon Street in Brookline and Commonwealth Avenue in Brighton, which paradoxically threatened the exclusivity of the suburbs. The new boulevards were designed to accommodate streetcars, and the transition to electric streetcars in 1889 facilitated Boston's period of greatest growth.Prominent spokesmen such as Charles Eliot and Sylvester Baxter promoted a coherent policy of improvement within the parameters of the Progressive movement. However, the explosive increase of the private automobile, with its overtones of individualism, proved difficult for civic-minded planners to manage. Eliot, Olmsted, and other promoters of parkways did not anticipate that they- like the landscape in general-would be overwhelmed by automobiles. …