District 7 needs a new city councilor. Who can take on its challenges?
With just days to go until the 2025 General Municipal Election, Boston’s District 7 is once again ready to pick a new City Councilor. Eleven candidates competed in September’s preliminary election to replace former Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson. Now, finalists Said Ahmed and Rev. Miniard Culpepper are looking to represent the historically Black and politically active district.
The cities where buying a house is most and least affordable as mortgage rates change
When mortgage rates dropped to historic lows in 2021, below 3 percent, Britt Vaughan met with a real estate agent and tried to buy a home in Altadena, California, where he and his wife have lived for more than a decade. Vaughan, who works for a Los Angeles city agency, and his wife, a marriage and family therapist, had a budget and knew what they could afford. Month after month, he scrolled through real estate sites and fell into the gloomy habit of looking up the price of every house he passed with a “for sale” sign. But with student loans, and such unexpected events as a car crash and wildfire damage eating into their savings, they never felt ready to buy. All the while, home prices and mortgage rates kept climbing.
From land takings to gentrification, East Boston has seen generations of ‘lost futures’
During his time as a postdoctoral research fellow, social worker Josh Lown found he didn’t have to look beyond his own East Boston neighborhood when doing research for a paper on “hauntology.” The term, coined by French philosopher Jacques Derrida, describes the emotional toll of unforeseen changes on a community.
Amid housing crisis, Boston’s building boom has gone cold. How much of that is due to Mayor Wu?
Just a few years ago, Boston’s skyline was dotted with cranes, the visual manifestation of a building boom reshaping the city. Today, those cranes are all but gone. And construction has fallen sharply. Amid a shortage that has driven rents skyward and pushed some residents from the city, 2023 and 2024 were the slowest years for housing construction since 2011, city data show. Nationally, Boston is building fewer homes than many other peer cities, including Seattle and Washington, D.C.
Boston faces its biggest economic threat since the industrial collapse
James O’Connell’s new book may not be everyone’s idea of a beach read. But if you’re interested in how cities rise and fall, and how global forces impact a region’s economy, it could be the perfect page-turner for your lakeside lounging this summer.
Poll shows most Mass. voters favor more housing despite local resistance
A new poll from MassINC, commissioned by the pro-housing group Abundant Housing Massachusetts, found that the majority of the state’s voters actually support new housing development, favoring it over other considerations like preserving the character of neighborhoods.
Green retrofit projects face hurdles under federal funding cuts
When Codman Square Neighborhood Development Corporation was awarded a federal grant last fall, it was set to mean health improvements, cost savings, and greenhouse gas reductions for residents in its Talbot Bernard Senior property.
Why Massachusetts women have fewer children and Trump’s $5,000 ‘baby bonus’ won’t help
Experts caution that much of the nuance gets lost in the political noise. To better understand what’s behind Massachusetts’ baby bust — and whether proposals like President Trump’s suggested $5,000 “baby bonus” could reverse it — the Globe spoke with leading demographers, epidemiologists, and public health researchers. These experts point not to a single cause, but to a tangle of interwoven factors — some personal, others structural.
25 Years of Innovate@BU’s New Venture Competition Showcases Decades of BU Innovation
The Social Impact Track’s second-place winner of $10,000 was Culinary Commons, founded by Andrea Catania (MET’24). Culinary Commons builds public kitchens to foster a sense of community in urban areas like Boston, focusing on food justice and social cohesion.
Red line shutdown causes disruption to student commutes, MBTA looks for new solutions
Despite last year’s Red Line shutdown, MBTA announced that it will be temporarily closing the line again to perform “critical track renewal work” and necessary repairs throughout April, according to its website.
An entrance to the Harvard Red Line station. The Red Line will be closed for track maintenance and replaced with shuttle bus and train services during April. MBTA ran its usual shuttle bus from April 1 to April 9, and later switched to a shuttle train which will run until April 30. Deirdre Habershaw, Chief of Staff to the Chief Operating Officer at MBTA, said these closures reduce the cost for the MBTA since shuttle buses are “extremely expensive to run,” especially during the week.