Truck Stop City: The Right to Care in a System Designed for Efficiency
Newmarket Square is an industrial neighborhood in Boston and serves as a food processing and distribution center. For this project, we were asked to consider how the neighborhood might shift to become a “Near Future City.”
Newmarket Square is a void in the urban fabric in terms of density and services. This makes sense as it is currently occupied mostly by transient populations who cannot or do not feel the need to advocate for the space. However, Newmarket and the people who use it, however briefly they stay, deserve care.
I started by proposing an intervention at one of the distribution centers in Newmarket Square. Care for the workers is demonstrated through the design of the space. Relaxing gardens and shady seating areas provide opportunities to rest. Bathrooms, fueling stations, and cafes offer refreshment. The spaces create social opportunities for casual conversation and gathering so workers can interact with each other, encouraging and supporting their well-being and unionization.
The redesigned space maintains the necessary functions of a distribution center but allows other activities of care to occur alongside the industry.
The new design also adds an ecological function, where runoff from the pavement is controlled in retention ponds and recycled for the bathrooms, truck wash, and shade trees that support the workers.
The care and increased interactions for the workers create a situation where they are in a position to demand better working conditions.
Better conditions for logistical workers requires a change in the urban fabric which is currently lacking in services for them. The spatial changes that happen at one distribution center can spread to others, increasing the density of spaces that provide care for workers.
Increased care for the logistical worker also inspires a change in the urban fabric. The systems of care started in Newmarket Square grow beyond the distribution centers to the neighborhoods the workers deliver to as well, creating a network of social and caring spaces throughout the city. Neighborhood block structures are reconfigured with more places to stop and take breaks. Shared mailboxes, shaded parking, and public bathrooms reduce driver stress, and other amenities like parks, community gardens, and farm stands are built for the drivers and residents to share, allowing them to develop relationships of care with each other.
