Phillips Square in Chinatown was buzzing with energy on Dec. 8, as families, city leaders, elders, and curious passers-by gathered around to discuss the plaza’s future.
With confetti in the air, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and several city councilors made a festive appearance alongside Santa Claus, celebrating the moment as part of the annual Enchanted Trolley Tour that made stops across the city that weekend. The mayor expressed gratitude to Chinatown and briefly acknowledged the importance of the upcoming Phillips Square redesign.
Philips Square is at Harrison Avenue — between Essex Street and Oxford Place – where a strip of painted street is adorned with green and blue seats, and planters, offering a place of rest where busy traffic once dominated. The area was reclaimed from a length of previously widened street in 2019 through the City of Boston’s Tactical Public Realm Initiative. Phillips Square is now undergoing a redesign process to transform it into a permanent open space, a process started in July by the Boston Transportation Department.
Christmastime festivities aside, the transformation of Phillips Square could have long lasting consequences for Chinatown’s role as a hub for the region’s Asian Americans and Asian immigrants, its minority-owned businesses and of the shape of the very neighborhood itself. And it will all be built on a storied past that included times of turmoil, redevelopment, decay and activism. Today, Chinatown’s needs are connected to these past histories of displacement, and shaped by new threats as well – an unchecked climate crisis, runaway rents, and gentrification.
“Since November, we have directly spoken to more than 100 community members and leaders to gauge their hopes, needs, and vision for Phillips Square,” said Wenzheng Wang, the project lead at the Boston Transportation Department.
The City of Boston has allocated a half million dollars from the city budget to conduct the redesign process, which has been contracted to architecture firm Sasaki. Public engagement efforts are being led by CHIC, a community engagement consultant. Part of that effort includes the event that Sunday during which groceries were given away from Mayor Wu’s office as staff from the design and engagement team—many of whom spoke Mandarin and Cantonese—invited attendees gathered to complete the Phillips Square Community Survey. The survey aimed to gather comprehensive community views, polling event attendees on their vision for the space, desired programming events, and prioritization of amenities. Potential improvements included practical features like water sprayers to combat extreme summer heat, outdoor fitness equipment and a community bulletin board.
In discussing the future of the site, several attendees noted that the plaza’s story is deeply rooted in Chinatown’s complex history of resilience and displacement. Phillips Square as a public space was enabled in 2019 by reducing car lanes. The area had long been a major traffic spot in the neighborhood – since 1894 when Boston city officials widened the street on Harrison Avenue, demolishing homes and businesses in the process. These efforts were explicit attempts to erase the neighborhood. As previously covered in Sampan, The Boston Daily Globe even predicted in 1893 that Chinatown would “disappear forever in the official march of progress…”
Despite these challenges, the neighborhood endured. Chinatown’s perseverance is a testament to the community’s activism, which was tested again and again over the decades later during the constructions of the Central Artery (and its deconstruction), of area hospitals, and of several high-rise towers.
Phillips Square now even harbors a physical symbol of the neighborhood’s past, embodied in its two white marble fu lion statues. These statues were a gift from Taiwan to Boston Chinatown in 1982. They were later taken during the Big Dig by a contractor who dismissively labeled them “construction waste” and kept them in his house. After outcry from Chinatown community members, they were returned.
These statues symbolize the complex legacy of the Big Dig, simultaneously reflecting the urban renewal era’s historical disruption of Chinatown and capturing residents’ current concerns about ongoing urban development and displacement due to gentrification.
At the engagement event, Baolian Kuang and Roulin Wu from the Chinese Progressive Association shared concerns about worsening environmental conditions including extreme heat in the summer months and poor air quality caused by traffic. In addition to discussing the plaza, the two expressed concerns about the potential 25-story hotel proposed for development directly across the street at 15-25 Harrison Ave., where the old See Sun market was located. They said that the proposed hotel represents a pattern of real estate development in the neighborhood that does not meet the needs of long-time Chinatown residents, such as the workers who staff the neighborhood’s shops, restaurants, and bakeries. They highlight that these essential workers’ struggle to afford to live in the neighborhood, and that what Chinatown needs is affordable housing rather than more commercial development.
Kuang and Wu also noted that Phillips Square is already surrounded by tall buildings that trap air pollution and worsen air quality, which has contributed to disproportionately high rates of asthma among Chinatown residents. Phillips Square’s location at the historic northern entry to Chinatown has opened the park redesign process and nearby development initiatives to scrutiny from residents, too.
In response to a question about whether the redesign can address gentrification concerns, Wenzheng Wang from the Boston Transportation Department noted “We envision Phillips Square to be the new ‘Northern Gateway’ of Chinatown. By providing a vibrant and attractive space for Chinatown residents and businesses, we hope that this space will stabilize the northern section of the neighborhood.”
The effort all stems from a five-year-old broader city-wide initiative to increase green space. The city in 2019 hired the design firm Kyle Zick Landscape Architecture (KZLA) to design the plaza, in the style of “tactical urbanism”, which is described as “a design approach that implements low-cost, temporary improvements that aim to explore a potential long-term solution.” The public plaza, originally conceived as a “pop-up” space, features a colorful, painted ground the firm claims is inspired by the traditional Chinese landscape painting style of Shan Shui. Furnished with plastic, modular furniture and planters decorated by local youth, the space was initially designed as a temporary intervention.
Having outlasted its intended three-year lifespan, the Phillips Square plaza is now showing signs of wear – evidenced by the graffiti covering some of the green, plastic benches. All natural elements of the park are in removable planters and many of the plants appear to be in poor condition. The trees also provide minimal, if any, shade in the summer. The Boston Transportation Department’s intent to transform Phillips Square from a temporary to a permanent park raises questions of whether permanence will be reflected in more durable landscaping, benches, and other park features.
Some Chinatown grassroots organizations have called for the space to be transformed into permanent green space. They highlight the lack of access to green space for Chinatown residents and environmental justice concerns such as disproportionate exposure to extreme heat. The 2019 site plan presented to community members depicted robust tree coverage in planters. However, only a few small trees are present.
Wenzheng Wang at the Boston Transportation Department noted that structural conditions may constrain potential for permanent landscape features such as street trees, which require deep soil beds for tree roots. According to Wang, Phillips Square has complex underground infrastructure, including near-surface utility pipes and hollow sidewalk passages that add to the site’s subterranean complexity. The Boston Transportation Department is currently conducting an underground utilities survey. However, he noted that his team is “actively seeking to implement green infrastructure to combat pollution and stormwater runoff in Chinatown…and exploring the possibility of adding elements that could help combat extreme heat events in Chinatown.”
But not everyone is optimistic about the square.
One neighboring business owner told a Sampan reporter that while the plaza has not increased visitors to her business, she does see people frequent it to eat lunch.
And Helen Kwong Chin, co-director of the Chinatown Business Association, which represents around 70 businesses and associations, voiced reservations about the plaza’s current state, and its future implications for local businesses. In an interview, she candidly expressed her concerns:
“I don’t see people sitting there. It’s dirty, nobody is upkeeping that area. It is taking up parking space.”
She further noted the practical challenges for local businesses, highlighting that, “it’s very hard for delivery trucks to come down the street and make deliveries.”
Boston’s urban planning strategy, which includes the upcoming redesign of Phillips Square, will have major significance for Chinatown residents. The city’s decisions on the development of Phillips Square and the surrounding neighborhood — and the extent to which they address core Chinatown issues of climate crisis and gentrification — may be a harbinger of the direction of urban changes yet to come.
