Watching the Government Center bunker replaced

We should leave it as is, so once every 40 years or so the Pope can come say mass.

?

... some of the uses are not to my taste (an unimbpressive rib fest, skateboard exhibitions) -- but I would rather have them on City Hall plaza than on the Common.

It IS a wasteland in wintry weather -- but one can't really have a plaza for nice weather that turns into something else in winter. LOTS og parts of Boston are wasteland-like in the depths of winter.

A calendar of events this summer (probably not yet complete):

http://calendar.boston.com/boston_ma/events/boston+city+hall+plaza+events

They can be quite well done and well loved as public spaces. The Italians may be the best at creating such piazzas, e.g. Piazza Navona to pick one:

Americans have often sought to duplicate such success but have often failed. Why? Well, Americans typically miss all of the actual reasons and just claim that it's about grass. For whatever reason, early successful American public spaces often involved grass and I guess it stuck. But it's a coincidence.

Look at the example piazza above: the space is large, but not TOO large; it is surrounded by active ground floor uses on ALL sides; it is geographically a natural meeting point for people traversing the city by foot; there are places to sit; it has history and art; and the architecture is generally beautiful in a classical sense. And no grass! There are some tasteful, unobtrusive flowering plants alongside a building that add color and beauty without taking away from the piazza.

Compare that to Government Center:

The space is too large for human comfort; it is mostly surrounded by inactive uses at most hours, places that people do NOT want to be, except for Faneuil Hall; it is a decent natural meeting point; there are some places to sit if you don't mind stairs (nothing wrong with that); it has a tiny bit of history but most was obliterated -- people would rather go over to Faneuil Hall for that; the architecture is the most horrible style ever devised -- intended to scare, humiliate and brutalize people into submission.

Government Center feels like a glorified parking lot and apparently is often used as a glorified parking lot, as you can see in this picture.

You could probably get away with a lot of mistakes made, and even ugly architecture, as long as you get the scale and the diversity of usage right. Problem is, Brutalism usually requires inhuman scale -- to oppress the masses -- and it requires lack of diversity -- to avoid sullying the vision of the Master.

But even Brutalism can sometimes succeed, maybe by accident. Look at Christian Science Center. Admittedly the construction of this thing destroyed a neighborhood, but at least the plaza is used by people.

The scale is ostensibly too large but that is countered by the fact that most of the space is occupied by a really cool, unique feature that attracts people from all over: the reflecting pool. It is not entirely surrounded by active uses but there are very active places at both ends: Mass Ave and Prudential Center, plus a few things on Huntington Ave. The plaza is a natural way to walk between Mass Ave and the Prudential Center and a good meeting place. There are places to sit, and yes, even the grass is quite popular at one end. It has a little bit of history but again, had mostly obliterated what was there before. The church itself has quite nice architecture and is notable, the rest of the buildings are ugly modernist crap, but they can be safely ignored.