Paul McMorrow interviewed Jesse Baerkahn for CommonWealth Magazine. Baerkahn is the founder of Graffito SP, a Cambridge- and New York-based consultancy with the achingly hip (and oddly compelling) tagline "cities + food + arts + people + context + creativity + responsibility (or something like that)." What's the firm do, exactly? It makes neighborhoods that people want to live in 24-7, rather than flee around 5.
Take Baerkahn on the Seaport: "Physically, it's exceptionally unique because of its positioning to the city and the water. If you dump a retail district in there that's no different than a retail district in the suburbs, if it's the same as something in Jacksonville and Dallas just sitting there in Boston, I would consider that a failure. The built form of the Seaport should be unique to the Seaport."
Jacksonville? Shudder.
· City Maker's Mark [CommonWealth]