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Just speculating here, but MA may also be more paranoid about fire safety than in other parts of the world given how so many of our houses are made of wood, the history of major, deadly fires, and the amount of vegetation in and around our communities.

Is this development pronounced “L-eye-ra” or “L-ee-ra”? Anyone know?

Errrm, correct me if I’m wrong but I thought the population peaked in the 50s due to larger family sizes. I don’t think there were more houses back then. If anything, I’m sure plenty of homes since then that were once single family are now collections of condos. Exactly. We aren’t going to...

All these posts are way denser than I thought they’d be given the thread title. My first thought - would the topography work to have a zipline running from one end/corner of the Common to the other side of the Public Garden?

Well said!

Have built, sure. But as of Jan ‘25, how much is U/C?

Huh. Is this mostly South Station Tower? Where else is office space being built? The building over the Pike?

Umm…

I will defend these buildings to the grave. But they’re great for the location! They have so much retail. Caffe Bene, Lucy’s, Kung Fu Tea, and Blick (I think now closed) are great for the area!

Crap. I’ve been very upset about this move because I love the current location and its accessibility to Harvard Square. Allston feels like suuuuuch a downgrade. But those interior pictures are pretty dope. Maybe this isn’t such an awful thing after all.

I’m totally not well-versed on any of this, but this was my first thought on seeing the big busway increase. Beyond “adding a stop” to serve BU and Harvard, why not have all NYC bus routes originate/terminate at West rather than trekking all the way to South? Even better (in crazy town) extend...

Isn’t this justification for trying to build more SFH in Topsfield rather than strong-arming them into building multi-family now? It can always be up-zoned later. It’ll catch up to us someday.

Touché. I actually did have Montreal in mind as a counter example when writing that, but didn’t know about London or others. Does Montreal have its own issue with housing affordability? I think London does, but like LA I don’t think that’s too surprising given the fact that it’s London. If...

Dense, small-lot street grids (though it doesn’t even have to be grids)! But not necessarily apartment buildings! The second point that I’ve tried to make is that there are types of developments besides McMansions on cul-de-sacs that are just as backwards and hard to get rid of or build around...

Does it have to be? Far as I can tell from a quick Google search, the Weston of today started taking shape around the turn of the 20th century, but didn’t really reach it’s “final form” until the 1950s-1980s. I imagine before Weston was Weston, Brookline might have been like Weston. But things...

I appreciate your willingness to meet me halfway, but I do think this is ridiculous. Is there some example you have of another city in the world that does this (i.e. cuts off all infrastructure at an arbitrary point like a highway) and it works? There’s always some kind of urban step-down in...

The demand for housing is much higher in LA than Boston. I mean, even if the metro went fully YIMBY and agreed to essentially eliminate all zoning everywhere within 495 and put the whole area on a massive street grid, do you really think we’d become LA within a year or two? New England is the...

Density is usually measured in people per area. How are SFHs not denser than woodland given that definition? And who says I’m talking about mansions? Two connected homes surrounded by forest will house fewer people than 5 disjointed houses on small lots. But isn’t that what we want? On the...

Exhibit A as to why Greater Boston has a housing crisis, everybody! Nothing will ever get better in terms of the cost of living until this kind of thinking dies. Or maybe we just let Weston keep its trees and let Waltham become Kowloon because that’s where density already exists and where it...

It might be a limitation of the footprint. Current Matthew’s Arena has the rink and seats taking up most of the stretch between Mass Ave and Gainsborough with only a little bit on the Mass Ave side dedicated to concessions. Likewise, there’s maybe a little bit of room between the arena and St...