Americana: Taming the Combat Zone

Boston is the home of not only the bean and the cod but also the aptly named Combat Zone. The city set aside this seedy downtown area three years ago for X-rated movies, porn shops and other facets of the skin trade—in hopes of being able to contain them. But over the past year, violence has followed the vice: a Harvard football player was fatally stabbed, an exotic dancer was strangled, and a brisk trade in guns sprang up. Looking for ways to curb the rough stuff without closing the zone down, the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) has devised a strategy based on a reversal of Gresham’s law: a theory that good will drive out bad. The planners have announced a ten-year building program designed to ring the zone with respectability. Just west of it will rise a $300 million park plaza with shops, hotels and apartments. On the south will be an expansion of the Tufts University Dental School. Holding down the north side: an $80 million to $100 million federal courthouse.

If the new construction fails to tame the zone, there will be at least one consolation: once the magnificent new courthouse is built, the zone’s denizens will be condemned to plying their trades literally in the shadow of justice.