Blog on “Brainiac” about “The Hub’s Metropolis”

Kevin Hartnett, a blogger on the Boston Globe’s Brainiac website discussed The Hub’s Metropolis in a piece “Color by Transportation Era,” June 11, 2013. Check it out

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2013/06/color_by_transp.html

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Review of “The Hub’s Metropolis” in “Planning Magazine”

Book Review of The Hub’s Metropolis in the American Planning Association’s magazine Planning, July, 2013

Planners Library
By Harold Henderson

Two centuries of Boston suburbs

James C. O’Connell, AICP, a planner with the National Park Service in Boston, finds that area residents “lack a clear perspective of the entire region and how it has developed.” His response is The Hub’s Metropolis: Greater Boston’s Development from Railroad Suburbs to Smart Growth (2013; MIT Press; 326 pp.; $34.95).
Using a format inspired by Dolores Hayden’s Building Suburbia, O’Connell outlines nine stages of development, from traditional village centers and proto-suburbs (1800–1860) and country retreats (1820–1920) on up to interstates, exurbs, and sprawl (1970–2012) and the smart growth era (1990–2012). Along the way, he includes mill towns, Boston’s urban renaissance, and future possibilities for the Northeast region. The account remains readable while covering a great deal of ground both physically and temporally.

Period photographs, plans, and engravings make the book inviting to students of American urbanism anywhere. An example is the view of the Mystic Valley Parkway in 1897: all horses, bicyclists, pedestrians, and carriages. In his postscript, the author speculates on the impacts of climate change, expensive oil, and digital urban management on Boston and environs.

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