Curbed Cup Final Four: (3) Bulfinch Triangle/Government Center vs. (7) Dorchester

And now there are four: Our 16-seed Curbed Cup competition to decide the Boston area’s No. 1 neighborhood of 2017 is down to its final quartet.

Now up is Bulfinch Triangle-slash-Government Center vs. Dorchester. Polls open 24 hours. Go.

(3) Bulfinch Triangle/Government Center

HYM Investment Group

Few would have pegged this slice of downtown Boston between Beacon Hill, the North End, Downtown Crossing, and the West End as a prime Curbed Cup contender.

Until fairly recently, it was known mostly for the hulking Government Center Garage, Boston’s love-to-hate City Hall and its surrounding plaza, and a handful of tourism sites.

Nowadays, though, Bulfinch Triangle and Government Center are alive with activity.

For one thing, there’s the ongoing redevelopment of that Government Center Garage into a mixed-use wonderland of 812 housing units, 196 hotel rooms, 1.15 million square feet of office space, and 85,000 square feet of retail. What’s been dubbed Bulfinch Crossing is supposed to wrap in 2020 (it’s rendered above).

The area also got a swanky new T station at the end of last year, and even City Hall Plaza could see a renaissance of sorts soon.

(7) Dorchester

ArnoldReinhold/Wikipedia

Boston’s indispensable neighborhood had a typically variegated year.

There were big development proposals, including for the redevelopment of the 19.94-acre Bayside Expo Center site in Columbia Point into some kind of mixed-use competitor to Cambridge’s Harvard Squareand for a de-facto ground-up neighborhood at Port Norfolk that would include 150 condos and a 25-room hotel.

And let’s not forget major projects already underway, including the 11-acre one adjacent to South Bay plaza. That one’s due to have 475 condos and 130 hotel rooms.

There were the gorgeous houses for sale, too, and the speculation about further changes to come.

• Curbed Awards 2016: Best opening [Curbed Boston]
• Bulfinch Crossing flipping some rentals to condos amid changing market [Curbed Boston]
• Boston searching for design and construction firm for City Hall Plaza revamp [Curbed Boston]
• Boston's ugliest buildings, mapped [Curbed Boston]
• Bayside Expo Center the next Harvard Square? That’s what UMass wants [Curbed Boston]
• Dorchester’s Port Norfolk would get 150 condos under new plan [Curbed Boston]
• Dorchester’s massive South Bay project gets officially underway [Curbed Boston]
• Ashmont Shingle with oodles of openness drops price $86,000 [Curbed Boston]
• Old Boston Globe site in Dorchester would become office complex under new plans [Curbed Boston]