CB11: Live + Learn

Live + Learn: Our Neighborhoods and Institutions

Common Boston Week 2011 is a festival to celebrate our built environment – the streets, landscapes, buildings, and neighborhoods that make us distinctive. The events during the festival provide an opportunity for all of us to engage with new places and to interact with people who shape the city. We invite you to take a fresh look at Boston, understand its history, imagine its future, and discover it through this year’s theme of Live + Learn.

Boston’s world-famous institutions extend their influence throughout the U.S. and abroad. However, they also have profound impact on neighboring communities. Sometimes, conflicts grab headlines as institutions expand and tear down adjacent buildings and blocks. Less flashy but equally important are the positive impacts, including employment, social services, public transit, cultural amenities, and attractive campuses with public open space.

Institutions come in all sizes – from universities attracting tens of thousands to places of worship with a few dozen congregants — and all contribute to Boston’s urban fabric. Join us for Common Boston Week as we bring people together to explore the city’s diverse neighborhoods, institutions, and the connections between them. Programming will include behind-the-scene tours of hospitals, sneak peeks of our newest buildings, dialogues about design start-ups that have grown from Boston’s academic cluster, and installations that explore possibilities for the future of our physical environment.

This year’s theme of “Live + Learn” explores the relationships between Boston’s neighborhoods and institutions by opening up our buildings, campuses, and streetscapes. By bringing people together, Common Boston Week provides the chance to discover – and rediscover – the places where challenges, opportunities, and successes have made Boston a city of both well-loved neighborhoods and world-renowned institutions.