Boston, MA
It’s time for Boston to demolish the stigma of public housing – The Boston Globe
In Vienna, well-maintained public housing complexes are distributed across the city’s neighborhoods and come with amenities like gyms, schools, and even shopping centers. Far from being places to avoid, these complexes housed more than 60 percent of the city’s 1.8 million residents in 2022.
The Viennese call such housing “social,” to reflect its broad usage — nearly 75 percent of the city’s residents qualify for it. This means that a supermarket cashier and a software developer can be neighbors, with each paying less than 30 percent of their income in rent. In Boston, only households making 80 percent or less of the city’s median income are eligible for Boston’s scant 17 percent of subsidized housing.
Vienna-style housing in America: Dream or delusion?
When I returned home and breathlessly told my friends and colleagues about Vienna’s successful approach to public housing, I saw apprehension in their faces and got tepid responses. They seemed concerned, the way you might be for someone who’d clearly gone down a rabbit hole of delusion. On a couple of occasions, people expressed their skepticism. “Yeah, that all sounds really nice,” they’d begin. “But dude, that’s never gonna happen in America. Come on.”
Recent history is on their side. Greater Boston rent prices shot even higher into the stratosphere during the second year of the pandemic. The idea of bringing Vienna-style social housing here just seemed increasingly fanciful. But around that time, I noticed something that gave me hope. More journalists than ever were going to Vienna to write about its excellent public housing system, and US policy makers were taking note, too.
These Vienna stories heralded optimism. “Lessons From a Renters’ Utopia,” a headline in The New York Times offered. “How Vienna became the world’s most livable city,” the Guardian gushed. And as an explainer for Shelterforce, a nonprofit publication dedicated to reporting on affordable housing, Hawaii state Senator Stanley Chang and San Francisco assembly member Alex Lee published “How We Can Bring Vienna’s Housing Model to the US.”
Now, after years of affordable housing scarcity and a pessimistic outlook on what solutions are possible, it seems that more lawmakers are willing to think big about housing policy.
In September, Mayor Michelle Wu announced that the city would commit $100 million to a Housing Accelerator Fund, a reserve for kickstarting new housing projects that have run into financing obstacles. The housing accelerator will make it possible for the city to start acting like a real estate investor and directly subsidize public and private housing developments with infusions of cash.
The fund also presents an opportunity for Boston to finance modern, mixed-income public housing like the kind I saw in Vienna. One outspoken supporter of the idea is Boston City Councilor at Large Henry Santana, who spent his childhood in the Boston Housing Authority’s Alice Taylor Apartments in Mission Hill.
“Public housing gave my family a foundation with which to thrive,” Santana said on Oct. 17 at a working group session at Boston City Hall where councilors discussed mixed-income social housing. “I’m passionate about this kind of housing because it can help break down racial and social divides which have shaped our neighborhoods,” Santana added.
But as I took my seat on the sidelines of the meeting room beneath a portrait of James Michael Curley — whose last mayoral term coincided with the start of the “urban renewal” era that saw millions of public housing units razed in Boston — the guests I was most interested in hearing from were officials from Maryland’s Montgomery County. Thanks to them, we no longer have to talk about mixed-income social housing solely as a Viennese import.
Maryland is leading the way on social housing
In Montgomery County, modern, dignified social housing for a wide spectrum of incomes is becoming part of a new normal.
With its own fund, the Housing Opportunities Commission of Montgomery County (HOC) hired developers to build The Laureate, a 268-unit complex in Rockville with public transit access, a pool, and a gym. A quarter of the apartments are set aside for households making less than 50 percent of the area’s median income — about $76,450 or less for a family of four.
The building is fully owned by the city, setting it apart from most affordable housing projects, in which a fixed number of below-market apartments are baked into a building plan with the help of low-income housing tax credits. In Montgomery County, it’s as if policymakers asked, “What if we got into the business of housing development ourselves?”
The HOC works because it is a revolving fund, meaning the HOC lends developers housing accelerator money to fund the construction of a building, with substantially lower interest rates than they would get from private lenders. Once the building’s units have been leased to tenants, the HOC refinances the project, takes a majority stake in the project to establish municipal ownership, and pays itself back for the initial loan. With the housing funds replenished and the HOC having collected interest from the developers, the HOC is better able to fund more mixed-income public housing. Montgomery County Council member Andrew Friedson says, “The Montgomery County housing fund started with $50 million and now it’s $100 million. This is one of the most cost-effective ways to create housing.”
With that formula for financing mixed-income social housing, more cities and states are warming to the idea. City officials in Atlanta and state officials in Rhode Island have announced plans to form their own public development bodies, and Boston’s housing accelerator fund is a step in the same direction.
On Nov. 19, Mayor Wu announced that the first local project to receive housing accelerator financing will be Bunker Hill Housing, the Boston Housing Authority housing complex in Charlestown. A public-private partnership between the BHA and Bunker Hill Redevelopment Company, the project will result in 15 new residential buildings with a total of 2,699 apartments. More than 1,000 of these apartments — about the same number that made up the original complex at Bunker Hill — will remain deeply affordable, meaning their occupants will spend no more than 30 percent of their income on housing regardless of their income. But apartments in the old complex were exclusively available to low-income renters, while the new buildings will have a mix of rents, including for market-rate units.
Santana thinks this approach will yield dividends for the community. “In the United States, public housing has been traditionally viewed as this last resort for low-income families,” Santana says. “The stigma of public housing is tied to disinvestment and neglect. When you drive across the city and you pass a public housing structure, you know it’s public housing.”
Does Santana see a substantive difference between the terms “public housing” and “social housing”? “I think that ‘social housing’ reflects the philosophy that housing really should be a collective responsibility,” Santana says. “The term helps us reposition housing as a public good, rather than a commodity.”
Although that may be a tough sales pitch, Santana believes people are becoming more open to bolder interventions. “What I’m hearing constituents asking for, in all Boston neighborhoods, are options that provide stability; not just temporary fixes,” Santana says.
Today, when you arrive at 55 Bunker Hill Street — where the old BHA complex still exists, waiting to be knocked down, reimagined, and rebuilt — you’ll see a bunch of two- and three-story brick buildings that have clearly seen better days. They are weathered, their design dated and dour. The demarcation is clear: This is public housing, and that — the freshly painted buildings across the street — is private housing. But now, with the housing accelerator fund catalyzing an overdue renovation and expansion of the BHA property, that line is about to blur.
If Boston’s housing accelerator makes more projects like the Bunker Hill redevelopment possible, we might have a tougher time spotting the difference.
Miles Howard is a freelance writer in Boston and the founder of the Walking City Trail. He publishes the weekly hiking newsletter Mind the Moss.
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.
Boston, MA
A crowd scientist is helping the Boston Marathon manage a growing field of 30,000-plus runners
BOSTON (AP) — Running the Boston Marathon is tough enough without having to jostle your way from Hopkinton to Copley Square.
So race organizers this year turned to an expert in crowd science to help them manage the field of more than 32,000 as it travels the 26.2 miles (42.195 kilometers) through eight Massachusetts cities and towns — some of it on narrow streets laid out during Colonial times.
“There are certain things that we can’t change — that we don’t want to change — because they make the Boston Marathon,” said Marcel Altenburg, a senior lecturer of crowd science at Manchester Metropolitan University in Britain. “Like, I’m a scientist, but I can’t be too science-y about the race. It should stay what it is because that’s what I love. That’s what the runners love.”
The world’s oldest and most prestigious annual marathon, the Boston race was inspired by the endurance test that made its debut at the inaugural modern Olympics in 1896 — itself a tribute to the route covered by the messenger Pheidippides, who ran to Athens with news of the Greek victory over the Persians in Marathon.
After sharing the news — “Rejoice, we conquer!” — Pheidippides dropped dead.
Organizers of the Boston race would prefer a more pleasant experience for their runners, even as the field has ballooned from 15 in 1897 to as many as 38,000 to meet demand for the 100th edition in 1996. It has settled at around 30,000 since 2015.
As the race grew, it tested the limits of the narrow New England roads and the host cities and towns, which are eager to reopen their streets for regular commutes and commerce as quickly as possible.
“It would be kind of great someday to be able to grow the race a little bit more,” race director Dave McGillivray said. “The problem with this race is that it’s about two things: time and space. We don’t have either. … So, we’re trying to be innovative.”
That’s where Altenburg comes in.
A former German army captain who runs ultra marathons himself, Altenburg has worked with all of the major races, other large sporting events, and airports and exhibitions that tend to attract large crowds on ways to keep things safe and flowing smoothly.
For the Boston Marathon, which draws hundreds of thousands of spectators in addition to the runners, his models allow him to run simulations that help him see how the race might play out under different conditions.
“We have simulated the Boston Marathon more than 100 times to run it once for real. That is the one that counts,” Altenburg said in a telephone interview. “They gave me, pretty much, all creative freedom to simulate more waves, simulate more runners and — within the existing time window — they allowed me to change pretty much anything for the betterment of the running experience.
“And then we checked every aid station, every mile, the finish, every important point, (asking): Is the result better for the runner? Is that something that we should explore further?”
The most noticeable difference on Monday will be that the runners are starting in six waves — groups organized by qualifying time — instead of three. The waves, which were first used in Boston in 2011, help spread things out so that runners don’t have to walk after the start, when Main Street in Hopkinton squeezes to just 39 feet wide.
Other, less obvious changes involve the unloading of the buses at the start, the placement of the water and aid stations, and the finish line chutes, where runners get their medals, perhaps a mylar blanket or a banana, and any medical treatment they might need.
“For an event that’s as old as ours, 130 years, it allowed us to be a startup all over again,” said Lauren Proshan, the chief of race operations and production for the Boston Athletic Association.
“The change isn’t meant to be earth-shattering. It’s to be a smooth experience from start to finish,” she said. “It’s one of those things that you work really, really hard behind the scenes and hope that no one notices — a behind-the-curtain change that makes you feel as if you’re just floating and having a great day.”
Shorter porta potty lines would also be nice.
“What I loved about working with the BAA was how aware they are of what the Boston Marathon is. And they won’t change anything lightly,” Altenburg said. “So it was very detailed work from literally the moment the race last year ended to now. That we check every single option. That we really make sure that if we change something about this historic race, then we know what we’re doing.”
The BAA will look at the feedback over the next three years before deciding about expansion or other changes.
“Fingers crossed, hope for the best, but we’ll get feedback from the participants,” McGillivray said. “And they’ll let us know whether or not it worked or not.”
But keeping the course open longer isn’t an option. And the route isn’t going to change. So there’s only so much that crowd science can help with at one of the toughest tests in sports.
“I can talk. I’m a scientist. I just press a button and it’s going to be,” Altenburg said. “But the runners still have to do it.”
___
AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports
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