Plant a forest first?

In Allston, Park Vale Avenue looking toward Brighton Avenue

From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

Joan Wickersham writes in The Boston Globe: “I remembered how, ten years ago, the great Italian architect Renzo Piano told me about a proposal he had made to the university, that they begin by planting trees, enough trees to turn this land {hundreds of acres in Boston’s Allston neighborhood} into an urban forest. The trees would have created a healthy natural ecosystem, with its own cooling and flood controls. My point is not to pick on Harvard’s current planning. The Allston land will eventually be filled with high-performance hard-working buildings.’’

“But I am wistful about that forest that never happened, which would have created an environment in which the buildings wouldn’t have had to work so hard. Piano’s visionary question was not just ‘What should we put on this land?’ but rather ‘What kind of land should this be?’”

An interesting idea – start a development with the vegetation and landscaping, then fit in the buildings.

To read Ms. Wickersham’s column, please hit this link.