South Bay Crossing:
Urban Design Studio Project, Summer, 2016
Harvard Graduate School of Design
1. Site Analysis
The South Bay shopping center was originally designed by Edens to create “a pedestrian-friendly center filled with a diverse mix of essential retailers and restaurants as well as improved parking and enhanced visual aesthetics”. However, it has become an odd place with huge parking lots and big boxes of single-story retails and also pedestrian-unfriendly even though it is adjacent to two rail stations.
At the same time, with its close proximity to the Andrew Square Red Line station and the Newmarket stop on the Fairmount Line, the site that was once home to massive Sears warehouse is also a major missed opportunity for transit oriented development.
Before: The original South Bay Shopping Center
2. Design Statement
This urban design project, situated in Boston, aims to connect people from the surrounding neighborhoods and to string together the open spaces in the adjacent area by creating a transit-oriented and walkable community and passway.
The aims are to create a transit-oriented and walkable place that not only accommodate the needs of the population from the three
surrounding neighborhoods, South Bay, Dorchester and South End, but also connects them together.
The site plan features a set of large open spaces that incorporates green spaces, playgrounds and a stormwater facility (that aims to
slow down the stormwater flow and allow for soil filtration of the pollutants). These added open space are also well connected to the
other open spaces in the surrounding neighborhoods through the two major pathways in Southbay Crossing.
This project also investigates how a set of improved streetscapes through the south bay center site can become retail spines to connect adjacent neighborhoods and to activate an urban district.
Pathway into the center
Southbay Crossing Model
Green Space:
Connectivity:
