Our Theater District is another important part of the city, a very dense, congested, and vibrant part of Boston. Nineteenth century buildings are important. Boston is made up largely of 19th century buildings and we have a very aggressive preservation program now. That was a response to all the demolition that was done, and during the 1980’s, extensive landmark districts were created. Very strict urban design regulations were created throughout the entire city to which developers and their architects had to adhere. Our idea was that we wanted to make Boston a coherent place, an imageable place, and a legible place that people could enjoy walking around in.

We developed a funny little concept for downtown called the doorknob study. We created a map of downtown simply showing red dots to represent each doorknob. It provides a very clear indicator of where there is activity along the major shopping streets. But our doorknob study also showed there are vast areas where there are only a tiny number of doorknobs, like the government center area where the tall buildings are, where they will only have one or two doorknobs. You can really tell the difference between places that function well and those that don’t. Where there are lots of doorknobs, the streets are active and full of people. Where there are few doorknobs, the streets are empty at five o’clock. They are depressing to be in — the new cleared modern parts — as opposed to the traditional parts, which have hundreds of doorknobs with people coming in and out all day long.

There is a whole amalgamation of architectural styles in the downtown, including a series of two or three styles from the 19th century, early middle and late, along with a couple of styles from this century, including modern and postmodern, and with high-rise and low-rise all mixed together. It is quite remarkable in that all these different styles and sizes of buildings seem to work quite happily together, which I think is great good fortune. It’s a combination of luck plus our diligence at insisting on capable architects and strong urban design and architectural guidelines.

Rowe’s Wharf was another key step in the process of repairing the fabric of our city. The project was completed in 1990 on some waterfront land we owned as a part of urban renewal. This was the first mixed-use project we did. Up until that that time all the projects we did were single use projects like office buildings here, housing there, and commercial there. It was a very dramatic experiment to put Rowe’s Wharf, as a mixed-use project, on a prime piece of waterfront property.

We told them it was a competition and we said that you have to have ground level retail, that you have to have hotel use, housing, and offices. You have to have apartments, all mixed together and — oh, by the way — we also are now requiring that every inch of Boston’s waterfront be open to the public. So you have to have a public walkway around all the piers so that everyone who wants to visit your place can also get to the water. The project was an overnight success.

It was another example of a smaller project, not a vast citywide project, but a small compact project with very specific objectives and specific rules. Very talented developers and architects put together quite an extraordinarily successful project, which also was an overnight success and also set a stage for our harbor work. The concept is that every linear foot of harbor in Boston — with the obvious exception of dry docks where freighters come in where there is a public safety issue — every single linear foot must be open to the public and a public walkway must be provided.

The third example of a tiny project, but a hugely successful one, was a parking garage of two or three stories above ground left over from artery days, a hideous concrete parking garage that was built in the 50’s. A developer came forward and said: we have an idea. We would like to buy the garage, tear it down, and put five levels of parking underground to serve the financial district. But on the top we wanted to make a compact, wonderful park because in the whole financial district, there is no center, there is no place to gather, no place to sit outside and eat lunch.

So, with the help of Craig Harrison, an extraordinary landscape architect, a local Boston architect, and Norman Levanthal, a wonderful benefactor, and also the developer of Rowe’s Wharf, we built this wonderful tiny two acre park that was an instant success, the way Quincy Market was. We planted full-grown trees from Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum and it has a little cafe, has newspapers, has grass areas, and has hard surface areas. It is a wonderful oasis in the middle of a cluster of high rise office buildings, where office workers come from mid-spring when it warms up, all the way to late fall, when it starts getting cold. Even on warm winter days it is busy in the morning and certainly at lunchtime, but even well into the evening.

It’s very popular because it is tiny, compact, well defined, and sits in the middle of a highly populous area. This is the third example of the lessons we learned. Rather than vast, sweeping, expensive, parachuted-in projects, these smaller ones are beautifully crafted, beautifully designed, beautifully well done. So my advice to you in all of this is to make no large plans and think small. If you do that, Buffalo will be an enormous success in all its efforts all along its waterfront.

Even though the Central Artery project is a very big project, indeed, we’re thinking of the planning for redevelopment of the reclaimed land on the surface in terms of a lot of little projects. It is hard to knit the city back together again with a series of parks and open spaces but we are working on it diligently. There will be new parks, new museums, and other facilities in alternating fashion. But they will all be smaller buildings, the same size and same bulk as the smaller buildings along its edge. The old and the new need to blend together.

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