Andrew's Essay

Andrew Spalt
1/8/07

Urban Infostructure

On the JUA experience I learned a great amount about the city’s info structure and how the city is built around the needs of the people. At the city hall in Boston we talked to one of the higher ups in the office. He talked to us about the city’s future plan, how the city’s office buildings and residential buildings are managed to best benefit the city, and he also talked to us about where the city hall might be moved to. He said the city is trying to benefit the fresh out of college business kid, or big business firms, and push away from the residential regular old housing. They are also talking about building a new skyscraper. This skyscraper is going to benefit the city immensely. The design of the building is really unique. The building is going to have built on sun reflectors that are going to redirect the suns light down into the city so it is not as dark and dingy. This proposal would be a great addition to the city because it would brighten up the whole atmosphere around the city and make people want to be around the now more dark areas of the city.
Another place we went was to the mandarin oriental building that is being built in Boston. Mike Lavenes father is the project manager/like partner. He showed us the outer structure of the building and we got to see the workers working on the building. His father talked about what he does and how h has to keep everything on schedule and how important it is to keep everything under control and make shore you know exactly what is going on at all times or things will get all messed up and he’d probably loose his position as project manager. Mr. Lavene showed us the cite plans and what they had to do to when they were building the foundation of the building. They had to relocate all the wires and pipes under ground. Mr. Lavene said that that was one of the toughest parts of the project so far because they had to take up a who lane of the road in Boston to move the utilities. Now that there is only two lanes on the street rather than three all the drop offs are really difficult due to the traffic.
My essential question was not one of the most complicated questions. I asked Mr. Lavene what usually happens when people get hurt on the job. He said it doesn’t usually happen that often but when it does happen the company is covered by the insurance. He said they’ve had a broken leg, cut off finger, busted wrist, and a few other miner injuries like that.
The best experience of the trip was defiantly when we got to meet Mr. Lavene and get a tour of the job site. Also a part of our job in the group was to go around a part of the city and ask random people what they thought of the way the city is being managed, managed as in traffic, new buildings, and overall city development. The Urban info structure group was a great group and I learned a lot from it.