Green Space Conservation

As seen in the photograph above, there is a fair amount of paths leading to the bandstand from all sides of it, with grass filling in the space between each path. Boston Commons is taken care of by the Boston Park Department who has worked tirelessly to maintain the park. This care is the development of the 20th century public works and public space restoration period. Boston began taking heavy measures to maintain its green space, ranging from its Emerald Necklace to the Commons. This legacy of public green space maintenance has continued into the later 20th century with Boston Commons and the Bandstand taking on more prominent roles with the founding of the Boston Walk for Hunger in 1969, and the further gathering of events in the Commons and the Bandstand. 

The Parkman Bandstand’s history is very different from the Commons’ because of the young age of the bandstand. However, with the continued emergence of various social causes, the bandstand took on further and further prominence in the commons. Originally, there was a series of famous puppet shows based on colonial Boston being performed, but that faded away as social tensions over the show’s content and the overall decrease in puppet shows declined. The puppet shows are very representative of Boston’s continued desire to maintain its colonial history, especially as a marketing point of its very touristy Boston Commons. As Saskia Sassen states in the essay “The Global City: Introducing a Concept” in The Blackwell City Reader, “The globalization of economic activity entails a new type of organizational structure” (Sassen 126). Boston as a city wanted in the 20th century to become a global city and because of that started changing itself and its infrastructure, especially when it came to its tourist attractions. The cleanup of Boston’s downtown district was very crucial to rebuilding Boston as an attractive city to both visit and live in. The bandstand was for multiple reasons, but majorly for restoring more of Boston’s tourist attractions, restored in 1996 to its modern and pristine self.