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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Posted inThe Download
Hating on the haters
Boston is no place for hate – and we’ll beat you and isolate you to prove it. Message sent, message received. From elected officials to the 15,000 to 40,000 demonstrators […]
Posted inThe Download
Trump’s disruptive power
Donald Trump signed 42 executive orders in his first 200 days as president. By comparison, Barack Obama, who Trump criticized for signing too many, averaged 35 executive orders a year […]
Posted inThe Download
NYC subway system looks to Boston
In case you missed it, the New York City subway system is in crisis mode, and officials in the Big Apple are looking to Boston for some answers. At the […]
Posted inThe Download
4 takeaways from sales tax moves
You could actually see an industry in transition on Wednesday. Amazon held a giant job fair at nearly a dozen of its US warehouses, including the one in Fall River, […]
Posted inThe Download
Here’s the Diehl
Geoff Diehl made it official last night by formally announcing his Republican run against US Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Somebody pass Charlie Baker the antacids. The Whitman state rep mixed his […]
Posted inThe Download
A Metco take-down
The headline on the Sunday Globe front-page story suggested the 50-year-old school integration program known as Metco was a mixed bag, but the story painted an almost uniformly dismal picture […]
Posted inState House News Service, The Download
For Jackson, tight squeeze to Walsh’s left
Marty Walsh is out of touch with issues affecting working-class people and those in the city’s less affluent neighborhoods. He’s more attuned to downtown development than down-on-their-luck constituents, and he […]
Posted inState House News Service, The Download
As the Globe churns
The newspaper industry is volatile enough because of outside pressures that stability at the top is a requirement to ensure as smooth a ride as possible in navigating the shifting […]
Posted inState House News Service, The Download
Hingham drama
For a small, toney town, Hingham generates an awful lot of news. The latest comes in Sunday’s Boston Globe with the recounting of a suicide by a distraught 26-year-old man […]
Posted inThe Download
The Codcast: Trash talk
CommonWealth ran a cover story in January 2015 that featured a photo of a dump truck unloading trash at a massive landfill in New Bedford. The headline, drifting in the […]
Posted inThe Download
Another side to pot billboard
A billboard dispute in South Boston is proof that people can look at the same image and see something very different. The billboard carried this message: “States that legalized […]
Posted inThe Download
Galvin throws shade on Millennium tower deal
Long ago, Beacon Hill insiders used to call then-Rep. William Galvin the Prince of Darkness because of his penchant for intrigue and political machinations. But now Galvin is coming to […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Haven for city teens in peril
There are the periodic public squabbles that break out over who is doing what to quell violence in Boston neighborhoods and who is bears responsibility for stopping the cycle […]
Posted inThe Download
Guns, gangs, and toddlers
There is often very little daylight between victims and victimizers in the mayhem caused by gang-fueled gun violence. Sometimes that is the case figuratively, with today’s target of a gang […]