Seaport District a major missed opportunity for city, report says

Whatever its success with development and jobs, Boston’s Seaport District is a major missed opportunity for the city in terms of building a more demographically inclusive and diverse neighborhood from scratch.

That is the angle in a new multi-part report on race in Boston that the Globe’s justifiably famous Spotlight team is unpacking right now. From the article:

The Seaport offered the potential to do more than build glass towers with harbor views. After decades of government investment, it offered a chance to build something not just new, but different. It offered a chance to make inclusivity a real priority by pushing for diverse development teams and businesses that reached beyond the clubby world of Boston’s traditional powerbrokers to share prosperity.

Things didn’t turn out like that. To take just one example from the article: “Lenders have issued only three residential mortgages to black buyers in the Seaport’s main census tracts, out of 660 in the past decade.”

Meanwhile, the still-unfolding neighborhood has cost $18 billion in public investment. Now what?

A brand-new Boston, even whiter than the old [Globe]

Spotlight in Boston: Where the Best Picture winner was filmed [Curbed Boston]

Seaport District development: Mapping the biggest projects in the busy Boston enclave [Curbed Boston]