We visited Switzerland in August. So many things there feel right. Here are some ideas I took home that we should try here at home in Boston.
Things we can build.
We should build public sculptures and ornamental fountains. We are a city of “squares”, yet most of them lack a central object or focal point. Sculptures define a place, give life to the streets, and offer an opportunity to celebrate local artists. And let’s pretend for a moment we don’t all carry phones. Where do you meet up with your friends when you’re going out?
We should build public drinking water fountains. Swiss cities are full of beautiful, unique fountains dispensing fresh potable water. Boston has the best-tasting water in the United States! Let’s not just celebrate it–let’s flaunt it. (Apologies to Cambridge, which does not have MWRA water.)
We should build adventure playgrounds with real elements of danger. A city is only as alive as the energy its next generation brings. Boston has some decent playgrounds, but not nearly enough places for kids to really push their limits or learn with their hands. While visiting Bern, we dropped by the Spielplatz Längmuur along the river Aare. It features jumping mats, homemade bicycles and carts, tall towers, homemade roller coasters, stages for art and performance, and opportunities for kids (with subtle oversight from young adult staffers) to experiment with fire and saw and hammer wood with real tools.
Great infrastructure we can deploy for a better city.
We should make garbage collection silent and less ugly. We should replace all our garbage trucks with super-quiet electric models. The technology already exists and electric vehicles are perfectly suited (more so than engines) to rapid stop-and-go operation. The silence is beautiful. Furthermore, we should eliminate ugly urban trash dumpsters (who wants to look at these rusty industrial contraptions?) and replace them with European-style underground rodent-proof garbage bins that can be unloaded without deafening steel-on-steel banging and rattling noises.
We should equip 100% of trucks operating in the city with bicycle guards. Bicycle guards cost nearly nothing and save lives in crowded urban environments. Not only can we mandate their existence on all trucks entering town, but we could even start a local jobs program to install them on the vehicles of recalcitrant owners.
We can make great policy choices.
We should provide a free local bus, subway, and commuter rail pass for all hotel guests staying in town, valid for the duration of their stay. Hotels would present it as a benefit but in fact it’s a form of hotel tax. The MBTA would get a new revenue stream from out-of-town visitors, and visitors would be more likely to choose our public infrastructure over their Uber app. Bern and Lucerne do this and it works fabulously.
We should incentivize the activation of our public spaces day and night for all sorts of activities. In Bern, for example, the public squares would fill with market stalls during the day. Then at night, ping-pong tables and ballroom dancing with a live DJ might materialize in the same space.
We should eliminate roads along the waterways to the greatest extent possible and bring the city closer to the water. Boston’s Esplanade is a good start as a park, but it’s still quite cut off from downtown Boston. And maybe it’s time to delete Memorial Drive. Too many people are getting killed by cars there anyway.
We should eliminate billboards and most outdoor advertising. It’s ugly. Nobody likes it. And very little of the money flows back to the community that has to look at it. Most billboards in Boston are operated by out-of-state companies and they are very lightly taxed. Excluding MBTA advertising, the only people getting much benefit from billboards are big corporate land owners. And honestly, we should find other ways to fund the MBTA.
We should normalize river swimming as a first-class recreational activity in Boston. Everyone in Bern swims. It’s not unusual to see someone walking through town with an inflatable boat or a dry bag. (You can even buy swimming equipment at an ice cream stand or a convenience store.) The river is what ties Boston and Cambridge together, so we should make it a first-class part of our lives. To get there, we need to build a little infrastructure and, more importantly, clean the water. If I were king of Boston, I would book a world-class swim event on the Charles two years out and give that timeline to the engineers to solve the problem. After that, we look for any pipe discharging contaminates into the river and plug it forever. Problem solved!