Tag: Parks

Update on the Rozzie Urban Wild Effort

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Roslindale Greenbelt Protection Overlay District
Roslindale Greenbelt Protection Overlay District

Last week, we posted about a Boston City Council hearing scheduled for this Monday on protecting and enhancing the American Legion Parkway area in Roslindale. Reports are that the hearing was wildly successful. Each neighbor’s testimony, whether by letter or personal appearance, was powerful, informative, and from the heart. Together, residents from around the area made this corridor neighborhood visible to the City. City Councilors Murphy, Wu, and O’Malley showed great enthusiasm for the project, and expressed willingness to facilitate multi-departmental collaboration on behalf of the project.

Below are additional maps to supplement the ones posted here earlier. Although the city Open Space Senior Planner indicated at the hearing that American Legion area was not “Greenbelt Protected,” these maps show that it is.

Other useful sources of information:

Maps

Maps Posted for Rozzie Urban Wild Protection Hearing

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A few days back, we posted about a City Council Hearing on the “urban wild” land around American Legion highway. The entry has just been updated with detailed maps (reproduced below as well). Go check it out!

Rozzie Urban Wild Protection Hearing – Sept. 21, 2015 10am City Hall

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[Post Updated 9/20/15 – Maps Now Included]

City-Councilors-at-Large Michelle Wu and Steven Murphy are co-sponsoring a hearing before the Council’s Committee on the Environment and Parks, to discuss protecting and designating as an “urban wild” land around American Legion Highway. The hearing will be on Monday, September 21, 2015, at 10am, in the Iannella Chamber, 5th Floor of City Hall. Public hiking trails, walking/multiuse paths, and the like, are a key ingredient to a more walkable Roslindale, and are particularly needed in the sections of the neighborhood further from the Arboretum. More details below. Please support this effort!

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Soofa and the Virtue of Experiments

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Sandra Richter, co-founder and CEO of Soofa, and Boston Mayor Martin Walsh, shortly after Boston’s pilot program launched last year. Image via Soofa.
Sandra Richter, co-founder and CEO of Soofa, and Boston Mayor Martin Walsh, shortly after Boston’s pilot program launched last year. Image via Soofa.

The Globe reports today on the broader roll-out of the Soofa “smart” bench, including one in front of the famed Toscanini’s ice cream shop in Central Square, Cambridge. The Soofa features a solar panel and free USB charging ports. This news follows last summer’s pilot program when Soofa was deployed in select parks throughout Boston; sadly, Rozzie was not included.

Why does this matter? No one is deeply suffering from the lack of phone charging facilities. It is far from the most urgent infrastructure need in our neighborhood (or anywhere). But these sorts of projects are important because they represent and promote new and creative uses of public space. They expand our imagination about the possibilities of the commons. Just as we are re-thinking most aspects of our home and work spaces in light of new technology and a rapidly-transforming economy, we should seek out experiments–both modest and bold–for our public spaces, to discover what works and what doesn’t. Roslindale is the ideal neighborhood to try out these ideas because of our compact layout and diverse demographics. Let’s make sure we are not left out of these new urban visions in the future.

Also worth checking out: results and lessons learned from the Soofa experiment via the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics.