This summer in East Boston, a new pop-up public space is covering up a sun-baked field of asphalt in Day Square, offering a small measure of relief for a neighborhood that is uniquely vulnerable to summer's increasingly miserable heat waves.
Day Square occupies about 1.5 acres of pavement where Bennington Street and Chelsea Street cross each other at an angle, creating a bowtie-shaped open space that has been, until recently, mostly reserved for parking lots.
But earlier this month, the City of Boston took 11 parking spaces at the eastern end of the square to create a temporary plaza, with tables, benches, a foosball table, and a gauzy tent structure to provide some shade.
Bianca Fields, a visual artist who lives nearby, was relaxing at a table with a cold drink she'd brought from a nearby coffee shop on Tuesday morning.
"I was out of town for a while, and when I came back I just noticed they'd put this space up here," Fields told StreetsblogMASS. "Instead of going to a coffee shop, I came here. It's central, it's quiet... it feels like a communal, safe space. I love it."
Pilot project will test ideas for permanent public space improvements
According to a new city website for the plaza, the temporary public space will remain in place until the end of September.
The city is collaborating with the Veronica Robles Cultural Center to plan events, like live music and public markets, for the space (if you or someone you know might be interested in using the plaza, the city has a registration form here).
But the city also has longer-term plans to create a more permanent public space here – and help improve street safety and transit service as part of the bargain.
The new PLAN: East Boston document, which the city's planning agency formally adopted in January, called on the city and the MBTA to "implement near-term changes to Day Square and Chelsea Street to create Day Square Station and the Chelsea Street bus lanes" through the center of the square, approximately where the pop-up plaza is located.
A parallel bike path would also connect the square to the Mary Ellen Welch East Boston Greenway.
The busway would continue into Chelsea on a pair of new center-running bus lanes on Chelsea Street. The busway would benefit the Silver Line and the new frequent-service 104 – due to be implemented this winter in the first phase of the T's bus network redesign (the Silver Line currently bypasses the Day Square neighborhood by running on the Martin A. Coughlin truck bypass road instead).
Plan: East Boston also envisioned eliminating Bennington Street as a motor vehicle roadway through Day Square between Bremen and Chelsea Streets. That change would create a considerable amount of new public space, and also dramatically simplify motor vehicle traffic through the square.
"The pop-up plaza will also serve as an ideation platform for the plaza’s future permanent design," according to the City of Boston's project website.
East Boston suffers from hotter temps, less shade
Boston's 2022 Urban Forest Plan identified East Boston – and the Day Square neighborhood in particular – as a literal hot spot that suffers from higher temperatures and a lack of shade.
East Boston as a whole occupies 10 percent of the city's land area, but contains just 3 percent of its urban forest canopy. Meanwhile, many acres of the neighborhood are paved under expressways, tarmac, and parking lots, where pavement absorbs heat from the sun and from the airport's incineration of millions of gallons of fossil fuel every day.
