I’ve been collecting failed predictions related to Greater Boston’s physical infrastructure for the last two years in this space, under the title “The Future, Yesterday.” Together, they form a sort of shadow history of the city: bridges, tunnels, subway lines, highways, airports that may seem fanciful now, but were at least realistic enough as ideas to be printed in the Globe’s pages.
Today will be the last installment — but not for lack of material.
There’s plenty more there in the print archives, and if you have a Globe subscription you have free access. Take a look yourself: The city’s dreamers and schemers were rarely without pie-in-the-sky ideas for the city’s future. Some were nuts, but some showed amazing foresight. Some of their ideas would still make sense now. Others say more about the times in which they were written — the call for underground parking garages to double as bomb shelters, for instance, after World War II.
However, this feature was primarily intended as a visual project and many of the maps and photos I’ve run in this space are starting to look similar, even when there are sometimes significant differences in the details. I’d rather pull the plug now before they become monotonous.
Also, I feel like I’ve achieved my ulterior motive: to draw an implicit comparison to the cautious incrementalism of the present by showcasing the boldness of the past. Laugh at the zaniness of some of the ideas floated by long-ago Bostonians — but it’s a shame we can’t reclaim some of their sky’s-the-limit ambition.
To be clear, with the benefit of hindsight many of their ideas were bad. Like, really bad. We’re better off without a bridge between Hull and Winthrop, for instance; or a dock specially tailored for the needs of the Titanic; or the aforesaid zeppelin terminal once imagined for Medford.
But maybe the pendulum has swung a little too far in the direction of caution.
So with all that throat-clearing, here’s the last installment: an illustration published in the Globe on Christmas Eve in 1900 sketching the artist’s vision of how the city would look a century later and how its denizens would get around. With a population of 8 million, the city would have a submarine ferry to Nantasket, convenient airship service, moving sidewalks, and the ability to reach Europe in just four or five days. Everyone would own “an auto something or other,” and The Globe would serve millions of readers, delivering papers by pneumatic tube. Most of those “marvelous changes” did not come to pass: we got flight, bike lanes, and the internet instead. Though, who knows? Moving sidewalks still do sound nice.
This is an excerpt from Are we there yet?, a Globe Opinion newsletter about the future of transportation in the region. Sign up to get it in your inbox early.
Alan Wirzbicki is Globe deputy editor for editorials. He can be reached at alan.wirzbicki@globe.com.