Over ten years after the Big Dig finally completed construction, more and more people in Boston are willing to say the project was worth all the trouble.
"When Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway officially opened in October 2008, it capped decades of planning, billions of dollars in cost overruns, traffic nightmares and faulty construction known as the Big Dig," according to an article by Cameron Sperance.
Still, Sperance is able to get a chorus of local real estate experts on the record talking about the Big Dig as a dig deal for local real estate investment. In fact. "the city’s real estate community says the infamous infrastructure project is why Boston's reputation has soared to its place as a global city for development."
According to this characterization, the project was a net positive for the city.
This isn't the first time the discussion of the Big Dig has shifted toward the positive. On the tenth anniversary of the project's completion in 2015, Anthony Flint wrote about the project evaluates the project in more ambivalent terms that might have been thought possible in 2005. The the Big Dig was also considered as a model when Toronto was considering a proposal, which eventually failed, to remove the Gardiner Expressway.
FULL STORY: How The Big Dig Ushered In Boston’s Development Heyday
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Barrett Planning Group LLC
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
Mpact Transit + Community
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
Tufts University, Department of Urban and Environmental Policy & Planning
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ULI Northwest Arkansas
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