Bostonians do it bigger

On the topic of Boston, the city seems to be working hard at reclaiming lost space. The Big Dig is moving an elevated highway underground, releasing prime downtown land for the Rose Kennedy Greenway and restoring the connection of the city with the waterfront. The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority provides images, plans and descriptions of how the greenway transformation will be done - while removing the highway frees up 30 acres, the total project will create more than 300 acres of landscaped and restored open space, including over 45 parks and major public plazas. The old Central Artery isn't cleared away yet, but the last car drove the highway last weekend.

Whether the Big Dig was worth its $15 billion price tag is another story, but two spinoff projects provide some compensation. One is the Big Dig House that I mentioned in April. Here's another description of how the house reused material from the Central Artery in a way that could be replicated in other building projects. Small in scale, big in ideas.

The other project is reclamation of a 105-acre waste dump on Spectacle Island in Boston Harbor by covering it with 6 million tons of material from the Big Dig tunnelling, creating a new park complete with solar-powered visitor centre with exhibits and information on the island's history. And can the planners be faulted for installing a composting toilet atop an "80-foot-high mound of trash"? [via Metaboston]