HOVERING BY THE FAIRY TALE playground, by the pumpkin carriage and turreted castles, behind the swings, was a wall of murky glass, an abandoned factory. There were no other factories around my childhood park in Newtonville, just a pleasing selection of unique houses, arranged along sidewalks that led to a village center with a candy […]
Urban Affairs
Posted inArts and Culture
The Hub: An impressive front door to Garden, N. Station
NOT LONG AGO, attending a game at TD Garden or taking a train out of North Station meant you would need to come and go through a nondescript side door. There was no real front entrance, and little besides the sheer size of the two facilities to distinguish the sports arena and transit center from […]
Posted inOpinion
Get your hands dirty, plant a garden
THE SEEDS OF THE COMMUNITY GARDEN movement were planted in the counterculture of places like 1970s New York City, among “guerrilla gardeners”—daring green thumbs who didn’t always wait for permission to plant fresh fruits and veggies in neglected vacant lots. In the decades since, community gardens have become fixtures of public life in America. First […]
Posted inThe Download
The Codcast: Subsidizing congestion
Everyone knows about traffic congestion in Boston. It’s why we’re often late for meetings. It’s why sightseeing firms are paring back their tours because the tourists are spending too much time sitting in traffic. And it’s why many Boston officials are worried Amazon will take a pass on the city — traffic is just too […]
Posted inThe Download
Traffic trickle down
Do more cars mean less traffic? Hard to tell if you read two new studies designed to address congestion through technology, including one that was done based on Boston’s streets. Like any study, the results are a matter of interpretation and what was not addressed may be as important as what the study was based […]
Posted inThe Download
Perchance to dream
College campuses are anxiously waiting for President Trump’s decision on whether to dismantle or even substantially change the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. DACA was an executive order from then-President Barack Obama in 2012 that stopped deportation of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US as children and who pose no security threat. But […]
Posted inThe Download
Storm stirs the political pot
Government, according to a well-worn adage credited to Barney Frank, is the name for the things we decide to do together. Right now, aiding those affected by the devastation of Hurricane Harvey is, of course, the most pressing thing we are doing together. President Trump visited Texas yesterday, and the White House and Republican congressional […]
Posted inThe Download
What’s Amazon up to?
Amazon slashed the prices of a handful of items at its just-acquired Whole Foods chain, a move that garnered loads of publicity but shed little light on the online retailing giant’s long-term supermarket plans. Prices for organic butter, milk, bananas, eggs, almond butter, baby kale, apples, and responsibly farmed salmon all fell. The price cuts […]
Posted inThe Download
The Codcast: Tipping point for Confederate statues
After this month’s white nationalist rally in Virginia, statues of Confederate leaders are falling across the South. Protests by white supremacists against the planned removal of a Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville have set in motion a rush to rid town greens and parks of icons to the Confederate cause. Many have decried the […]
Posted inThe Download
Smart money in Massachusetts
Back in 1990, during his run for governor, John Silber made the somewhat controversial observation that not everyone is college material and those folks would be better off focusing on a vocation like plumbing or construction. Apparently, that Silber Shocker from the well-educated college president didn’t do much to thwart the pursuit of higher education […]