Boston, MA
Boston wants to revamp Chinatown zoning. Will it be enough to blunt gentrification? – The Boston Globe
The aspect of the city’s zoning plan that perhaps most strongly signals a break with the past would strike the rules that gave birth to the Combat Zone in the neighborhood. It would largely be a symbolic move, as the heyday of the notorious den of sleaze — once home to strip clubs, X-rated theaters, peep shows, and adult bookstores in the downtown core of Boston — is decades in the past.
Still, for those who advocate for Chinatown, removing a slice of the zoning that for years allowed for Boston’s only adult entertainment district in their neighborhood matters. It’s a modicum of recompense for a time when city authorities largely ignored the wants and needs of a place that has for generations offered a beachhead for immigrants.
“Chinatown suffered decades of increased crime and negative impacts on the community,” said Lydia Lowe, executive director of Chinatown Community Land Trust. “That issue is very important.”
The rezoning discussion — a comment period for the city’s proposed changes ends in mid-January — comes amid a time of transition for Chinatown, one of Boston’s smallest neighborhoods, an ethnic enclave with a rich history in the city’s urban core. Talk to seemingly anyone in Chinatown and they’ll say that displacement is their largest concern. And demographic data back up the notion that the effects of years-long gentrification continue to alter the fabric of the neighborhood.
The city’s planning department this fall released a draft of new zoning regulations and design guidelines that “seek to promote affordable housing, emphasize the significance of small businesses and cultural spaces, and highlight Chinatown’s unique character,” Brittany Comak, a department spokesperson, said in an email.
The next public meeting, focused on property owners, will be held in January, with final recommendations to come later, Comak said.
The proposal looks to better protect the neighborhood’s historic row houses — symbols of Chinatown’s working class, which now faces displacement — by capping how tall developments can be in part of the district. Residents have fought to preserve the affordability and character of those structures, saying they are integral to the area’s cultural fabric, one of the last untouched pockets of a neighborhood roiled by development.
Under the plan, the maximum height of projects would be 45 feet, down from the current 80 feet. (Chinatown’s row houses tend to be three to four stories in height.) Other restrictions, according to the city, would help ensure new buildings “would be of similar size and scale to the existing row houses” in a certain subdistrict of Chinatown.
“We find that to be a positive change,” said Müge Ündemir, director of real estate for Asian Community Development Corporation, of the city’s zoning approach to the row houses.
Other parts of the rezoning initiative are being met with questions or outright skepticism.
For instance, an affordable housing overlay district would allow developers in parts of Chinatown to build structures up to 350 feet tall, if they meet two thresholds: 60 percent of the gross floor area must be devoted to residential uses, and 60 percent of the residential units must be income-restricted and meet an affordability standard. While advocates support the idea of more affordable housing in Chinatown, 35 stories, they argue, is way too high for the neighborhood.
Karen Chen, executive director of the Chinese Progressive Association, worries that such towering buildings could exacerbate quality-of-life issues in a neighborhood where some blocks are already cast in shadow and wind tunnels are a reality thanks to past development.
“Chinatown is so small and congested already,” said Chen. “Up to 35 stories is just ridiculous.”
Through a spokesperson, the city’s planning department said the overlay “reflects heights of recent projects in the area, how other areas of downtown are being rezoned to increase allowable building height, and acknowledges the clear community priority to deliver affordable housing in Chinatown in an area of limited sites for development.”
Others are critical of the income ceiling for who would qualify for the affordable housing in such projects. Under the city’s plan, households making up to the area median income would qualify. For a one-person household, the cap would be about $114,000.
Advocates want the cap to be much lower, say 60 percent of area median income, which would be about $68,000 for a one-person household. That would more directly help the neighborhood’s working class and working poor, they argue.
“The affordability standard, it needs to match where the neighborhood is at,” said Chen, who also worries that a proposed “transition zone” would contribute to the further encroachment into Chinatown of downtown’s luxury residential towers.
Angie Liou, executive director of the Asian Community Development Corporation, concurs, saying the general idea of incentivizing more affordable housing in the neighborhood is a good one.
“The devil’s really in the details,” she said.
Officially, more than 4,200 residents live within about one-fifth of a square mile that makes up Chinatown. (Advocates have long challenged the population estimate there as severely undercounted.)
According to city figures, about 64 percent of the neighborhood’s population identifies as Asian or Pacific Islander. Half the population is foreign-born, with just under half of all Chinatown residents speaking Mandarin or Cantonese at home. There was a time when those numbers were much higher. An old master plan for the neighborhood estimated that in 1990, 91 percent of residents were Chinese.
Chinatown’s history is one of political marginalization. The Combat Zone, which is now occupied by luxury apartments and trendy restaurants, is a high–profile example of the city treating the neighborhood as an afterthought. Two strip clubs on LaGrange Street still stand in the city’s “adult entertainment district” as a reminder of what once was. They would remain part of an adult entertainment district under the proposed zoning changes, as they are located just outside of what the city considers to be Chinatown.
There is a history of development profoundly changing the neighborhood, which has never produced a Boston city councilor. Construction of the Central Artery and the Massachusetts Turnpike took sizable bites out of Chinatown decades ago, and the steady expansion of Tufts Medical Center also ate away at blocks.
Amid current gentrification and displacement challenges, many first-generation immigrants and working-class Chinese Americans still look to Chinatown for their day-to-day needs, as they have for more than a century. A plaque at Ping On Alley memorializes the city’s first Chinese immigrants, who pitched their tents there starting in 1875.
Advocates say new zoning alone won’t stop gentrification, but some hope it could have a “calming effect” on the neighborhood. Enforcement of the zoning rules also matters. Liou, of the Asian Community Development Corporation, said the city has historically given out variances to Chinatown projects on a regular basis, which has had a cumulative effect of largely rendering the existing zoning moot.
“If it’s on the books and no one follows it,” said Liou, “It’s pointless.”
Danny McDonald can be reached at daniel.mcdonald@globe.com. Follow him @Danny__McDonald.
Boston, MA
Between Providence And Boston Is A Vibrant Massachusetts Town Bursting With Diverse Entertainment – Islands
For some, New England might conjure images of skating rinks, Colonial architecture, and quaint villages. Others might picture waterfront cities like Boston or Providence, rich in history and — in the case of Boston, especially — towering skyscrapers. As you drive between these two capitals along Interstate 95 — a trip that should take about an hour — you’ll pass by towns like Foxborough. For the last few decades, this little community has developed a reputation as a hub of diverse entertainment, making it a worthwhile pit-stop as you journey along the East Coast.
If you’ve ever watched the Patriots kick off from Gillette Stadium on TV, then you’re already familiar with this Massachusetts town. The stadium, considered one of the 10 best in the U.S. for fun activities and events, was completed in 2002, but Foxborough itself has served as the home base for the Patriots since the 1970s. In the decades since, the team has attracted millions of visitors.
Foxborough — also spelled “Foxboro” — is normally home to about 6,500 year-rounders, but it floods with thousands more people on game or concert days. In total, the stadium can accommodate over 65,000 fans. When you’re not at Gillette Stadium, which is less than 4 miles from the heart of downtown, you’ll find plenty of other things to do. There’s live theater, outdoor recreational opportunities, and an eclectic mix of dining options, each deserving some exploration.
NFL games and Cranberry Bogs in Foxborough
Foxborough is located roughly 30 miles from Boston and just over 20 miles from Providence. In the area, you’ll find plenty of suburbs with historic downtowns and lush trails, like Hopedale, but Foxborough, nicknamed the “Gem of Norfolk County,” has one of the most diverse mixes of entertainment options. Marilyn Rodman Performing Arts Center, for instance, housed in a 1920s-era silent movie theater, offers a busy calendar of comedy and musical performances year-round.
Football fans will also enjoy visiting the Patriots Hall in Patriot Place Mall, which is open daily for $10 per standard ticket. Here, you’ll be able to watch interviews with former players and stroll through a range of exhibits. “I liked all the different memorabilia from all different players all labeled with who and what milestone they came from,” reads one review on Tripadvisor. Afterward, check out the dozens of shopping and dining options in the surrounding mall, which also has its own commuter rail station and connected hotels. Gillette Stadium is next door; along with the Patriots, the venue has hosted performers like Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen, and The Rolling Stones.
The Ocean Spray Cranberry Bogs and surrounding nature trails are also part of Patriot Place. Planted back in the 1920s, these bogs continue to thrive. They’re typically harvested in October, when visitors can attend the annual Harvest Festival. At this fun and family-friendly local event, you’ll be able to enjoy an inflatable corn maze, a beer garden, live music, and more.
Where to eat and sleep in Foxborough
As you explore Foxborough, you’ll find a range of dining options, from classic breakfast plates at The Commons, to artisanal burgers at Union Straw. As one reviewer writes about the latter on Google, “[This is a] Gorgeous venue, one of our favorite daytime lunch or date places. All food options are 10/10, truffle burger, gnocchi bolognese, and the flatbread pizzas are delicious and the fries are perfect.”
If you’re planning to spend the night rather than hit the road after a burger at Union Straw or a long football game, you’ll have a range of vacation rentals, local inns, and chain hotels to choose from. The Rally Point Inn & Pub, for instance, is within walking distance of local restaurants and shops. It also has its own sport-themed bar, weekly trivia nights, and karaoke. Just make sure to book your stay well in advance, as places tend to fill up before popular events.
The nearest airport is also in Providence, but you’ll find more flight options at Boston Logan International. Travelers can also opt for the “Event Train,” which runs between Patriot Place and Boston’s South Station on game days, providing a convenient way to avoid the notorious traffic. Besides the I-95 drive from Providence to Boston, there are plenty of other New England road trip tours you can take through gorgeous small towns. That being said, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a destination that attracts as many annual visitors as Foxborough.
SALT LAKE CITY — Up until the past month or so, Clayton Young wasn’t sure if he’d make it to the starting line of the 130th Boston Marathon.
By Monday afternoon, he was walking away from the course with a stunning new personal best.
Young finished the 26.2-mile point-to-point course in a personal-record time of 2 hours, 5 minutes and 41 seconds Monday, good for 11th place in an all-time year. Zouhair Talbi ran the fastest time ever by an American, finishing fifth overall in 2:03:45 and Jess McClain broken the American women’s record in 2:20:49.
In all, seven American men and 12 American women finished in the top 20 of the prestigious marathon — including Young, whose streak of six consecutive top-10 finishes dating back to 2023 (including the Paris Olympics) ended, albeit barely.
But donning the No. 24 bib and a brand-new kit for new sponsor Brooks, the former BYU national champion who prepped at American Fork High jumped into the lead pack from the start and never looked back as he broke his previous lifetime best set from the 2023 Chicago marathon and the Olympic trials nearly a year later by close to 3 seconds.
“With only nine weeks of training. … I was really happy to be a 2:05 guy,” Young told FloTrack after the race. “Obviously, falling outside the top 10 is a little disappointing, but I’m really happy with the time.”
The final finish was only the faintest disappointment in the incredibly fast field.
Young’s finish as the third fastest American on Monday marks the fifth-fastest time by an American man all-time in Boston. Charles Hicks finished 50 seconds behind Talbi in 2:04:35, with Young coming in just over a minute later to cheers of friends and family.
His former BYU teammate, Canadian international Rory Linkletter, finished 14th with a personal-best time of 2:06:04. Former BYU runner Michael Ottesen finished 52nd in 2:16:06, and Utah resident Todd Garner finished his 11th running of the Boston Marathon all-time in 3:14:35.
“I think we’re in an era in distance running, on the men and women’s sides, but especially the women’s side, where we’re all making each other so much better every time we line up with one another,” McClain told the Associated Press. “And I think it’s just going to get stronger and stronger.”
Former Utah Valley and BYU runner Kodi Kleven finished 14th in the women’s race with a personal-best time of 2:24:48. The three-time St. George marathon course record holder from Mount Pleasant led for large portions of the race en route to her qualifying time for the 2026 U.S. Olympic marathon trials.
Former BYU standout and Utah State coach Madey Dickson, who also runs trains locally with Run Elite Program, beat her previous personal record in 2:28:12 — good for 18th in the women’s race.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
For an industrial robot built for the rigors of factories and power plants, tidying up a living room may seem like a light day at the office for Spot. Yet, a recent video of the robot picking up shoes and soda cans in a residential home represents the promise of AI models in robotics. In this case, Google’s visual-language model (VLM) Gemini Robotics-ER 1.5 was empowering Spot with embodied reasoning.
This particular demo grew out of a 2025 hackathon at Boston Dynamics that built on prior projects using Large Language Models (LLMs) and Visual Foundation Models (VFMs) to enable Spot to contextualize its environment and engage in more complex autonomous actions than a typical Autowalk mission. Rather than write formal software logic or a “state machine” program that defines each step of a given task, we interacted with Gemini Robotics using conversational language. In turn, it communicated with Spot on our behalf.
A Robust SDK and Natural Language Prompts Save Time
Using Spot’s SDK, we developed a layer that facilitated interaction between Gemini Robotics and Spot’s application programming interface (API). The API normally gives developers access to the robot’s capabilities to create custom applications or behaviors. For example, researchers at Meta have used Spot to test how an AI system could locate and retrieve objects it had never seen before.
Our ability to engage Gemini Robotics using natural language prompts was a huge timesaver, compared to traditional programming. We told Gemini Robotics it had access to a mobile robot equipped with cameras and a robotic arm. It also had a finite set of tools it could use to control the robot. A tool is a lightweight script that performs some internal logic and translates inputs from Gemini Robotics to actual API calls. We limited the actions to navigating between locations, capturing images, identifying objects, grasping them, and placing them somewhere else.
The extent of our SDK means there are great examples one could leverage to add more access to the API with minimal development.
Giving Gemini Robotics a Baseline
To start we needed to explain to Gemini Robotics what we wanted it to do. We did experience a learning curve when writing these baseline prompts. Simple instructions like “put down an object” or “take a picture” weren’t detailed enough to produce expected behavior. We had to add context in our descriptions as we refined each tool.
A good example is the detailed prompt for the “TakePicture” tool:
This command will cause the robot to take a picture with the specified camera. There is some nuance to choosing the correct camera. Once arriving at a location using GoTo, you should always start by taking a picture with the gripper camera, because it's the most informative.
If the robot has arrived at location and is already holding an object, you can do one of two things:
1. Immediately call PutDown
2. Search the area with either of the front cameras. The front cameras are low to the ground, so if you're trying to put things on an elevated surface, they won't give you useful information.In this example, we gave Gemini Robotics no detailed description of the robot’s chassis or arm. Instead, we simply explained that Spot’s front cameras would be too low to photograph objects on elevated surfaces. We were able to iterate rapidly, as small changes in wording produced noticeably better results. Once it had this set of basic tools through the API, Gemini Robotics could sequence Spot’s actions and follow the handwritten instructions on a whiteboard on the day of the demonstration.
How Gemini Robotics and Spot Collaborate
Until the robot powers on, Gemini Robotics has no context for what specific tasks we might ask it to perform in a given demo. We only provided simple written instructions, such as, “Make sure all of the shoes at the front door are on the shoe rack.” Gemini Robotics evaluated images from Spot’s cameras and identified objects in the scene that matched the instructions. These objects became the reference points for Spot’s navigational and manipulation systems.
In many respects, Gemini Robotics was identical to an operator manually driving Spot using its tablet controller. For example, to pick up an object with Spot, an operator positions the robot near the object and then uses a grasp wizard to identify the target object. The operator provides high-level direction and Spot figures out the exact details. In this demonstration, Gemini Robotics functioned as both the operator and the tablet sending commands to the robot. This freed us up to act more like a team lead, providing a high-level to-do list and trusting Spot and Gemini Robotics do the rest.
Call and Response
When Gemini Robotics engages a given tool, the tool responds with results and context, such as, “I picked up the object,” or “I can’t pick up something while my hand is full.” Gemini Robotics then makes adjustments on the fly based on this feedback from Spot. For example, to pick up shoes, Gemini Robotics requests an image, identifies the shoes in that image, and calls the “pickup” command. By creating fundamental tools that semantically flow in conversation, Gemini Robotics can manage the sequence of tasks required to clean up the room. Spot’s existing software stack manages the locomotion, navigation, and manipulation of the robot itself.
It’s important to note Gemini Robotics has strict boundaries in this scenario. It can’t invent new capabilities or control Spot beyond what is available through the API. This keeps Spot’s behavior predictable, while still allowing Gemini Robotics to adapt to different situations.
A Force Multiplier for Developers
For developers already working with Spot, this research has tremendous potential. Through Spot’s SDK, they have access to a robust toolkit of capabilities. Companies use these tools today to build applications for inspection, research, and industrial data analysis, among others.
An AI model like Gemini Robotics offers a way to expand those applications more rapidly. Rather than write extensive task logic on top of Spot’s APIs, developers can experiment with having AI systems interpret natural language instructions and dynamically choose to engage the robot. As a result, models like Gemini Robotics can act as force multipliers, amplifying the reliable toolkit and robust performance that is already delivering value for Boston Dynamics customers.
Our Next-Token Prediction for Spot and Gemini Robotics
Although this is still an experimental step and not a hardened application, it illustrates a compelling direction for robotics and physical AI. Robots like Spot are already extremely capable of navigating complex and changeable environments, collecting data and sensor readings, and manipulating objects. Rather than reinventing the wheel, AI foundation models offer a new way to expand these capabilities in new settings and to new applications.
Physical AI is a rapidly evolving field and our team is leading the way in the lab and in real applications of AI empowered robots. While we are early in our formal partnership with Google Deepmind, we’re excited for what the future holds with Atlas and we’ve already rolled out practical enhancements for Spot and Orbit, with AIVI-Learning powered by Google Gemini Robotics ER 1.6. This next evolution of our AI Visual Inspection tool unlocks a new level of visual intelligence, as users benefit from shared expertise bringing a deeper level of contextual intelligence to Spot and Orbit. Model improvements automatically happen behind the scenes, adding more capabilities to the same software and hardware.
Today, this demo points to a future where users can rely more on natural language to guide Spot’s actions, rather than complex code. The engineer’s role shifts toward setting goals and objectives. The multi-modal robot foundation model interprets the instructions to form complex and adaptive plans and Spot executes the action.
This article was contributed by Issac Ross and Nikhil Devraj, engineers on the Spot team.
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