Reinventing Boston City Hall
This week we read Professor Townsend’s chapter entitled ‘Reinventing City Hall, out of his book, Smart Cities. In timely fashion, The Atlantic published a report noting Boston’s new campaign to engage citizens to literally ‘reinvent’ it’s physical city hall! Well, City Hall Plaza to be specific. In a simple though noteworthy concept, the city has openly asked citizens to submit ideas via Twitter (#CityHallPlaza) for the redesign of over 20,000 square feet of highly underutilized public space earmarked for development in the immediate future.
While the ultimate design will go through formal channels of RFIs and engineering/architecture firms, the open Twitter format of public input continues the city’s trend towards civilian engagement and excitement. Instead of ‘closed-door’ teams designing solutions, they now have a public campaign to listen in on and incorporate into their drafts. Instead of the public being told what their getting, or at best being allowed to vote, their wishes can be aggregated and funneled into the final product. At a time when Boston is receiving backlash from their highly unpopular 2024 Olympic bid, receiving only 36% public support, efforts like this promise higher satisfaction and utilization rates from the start.
