Spring 2025 | M | 2:30-5:15pm | Professor Betty Anderson
Spring 2025 – Betty Anderson
| Day | Start | End | Type | Bldg | Room |
| M | 2:30pm | 5:15pm | IND | HIS | 304 |
Boston has been engineered from the beginning, with landfill expanding the boundaries of the city far beyond the initial Shawmut Peninsula. In the process, city agencies have built parks; constructed streets and sidewalks; ruptured the city with the Central Artery; attempted to re-suture it with the Big Dig; enacted urban renewal projects; and designated sites to be explored by the city’s tourists. In the midst of all these changes, Boston’s residents have made homes for themselves in neighborhoods throughout the city.
Engineering Boston takes Boston as the primary source for studying cities and testing urban theories. Class sessions will toggle between in-class discussions of urban Boston and experiential walks throughout the city. Particular attention will be made to the neighborhoods surrounding the Central Artery/Rose Kennedy Greenway: the North End, the West End, Downtown, Government Center, the Theater District, and the South End. At the end of the semester, in coordination with the West End Museum and MetroBridge, students will work in teams to produce presentations on how the city demolished the West End in the 1950s, and how the residences have commemorated and remembered the event ever since. Effective Spring 2025, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Digital-Multimedia, and Creativity/Innovation.
Corner of Spring and Chambers Streets in Boston’s West End, 1910. Courtesy of the Trustees of Boston Public Library. https://globalboston.bc.edu/index.php/the-west-end/
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