This one's a no-brainer. The 60-story, 442-unit luxury condo tower is due to finally lift Downtown Crossing over the hump from a 9-to-5 to a 24-7 neighborhood.

The recently proposed project would run to 30 stories (and 305 feet) and be only 38 feet wide ... basically the kind of pencil-tower developments sprouting in Manhattan right now and a first, really for Boston. It would include 94 residential units.

This proposed project would tbe first true residential tower in Roxbury. The current plan calls for a 25-story glass-and-steel building atop the Institution for Savings in Roxbury and Its Vicinity, across from the Dudley Square MBTA Station. The first nine floors would be commercial space, mostly offices; floors 10 through 19 would be 1- and 2-BR apartments asking about $2,000 a month tops; and the rest of the floors would be given over to condos for as-yet-undisclosed prices.

All total, what M.I.T. calls the Kendall Square Initiative is slated to include six new buildings; 740 apartments over two of those buildings, or 500 net new housing units, including affordable housing and graduate-student residences; 100,000 square feet of new and repositioned ground-floor retail; nearly 1 million square feet of office and research space; three acres of plazas and parkland; and the retention of some 800K square feet of existing capacity for future academic use. The project officially started last month and everything is supposed to be done in the next six to 10 years.

The Boston Redevelopment Authority O.K.'d this project in July. It will involve six different buildings as well as a publicly accessible plaza of nearly 44,000 square feet connecting surrounding streets. The buildings all totaled will encompass 458,300 square feet; and will include retail, restaurants, office space, 35 condos at 15 Congress Street, and a 133-room boutique hotel at 68 Devonshire Street. Related Beal, the lead developer on the project (they're the same folks bringing you the car-less Lovejoy Wharf), wants the whole shebang to have a kind of "European-style arcade" feel about it, according to documents filed with the BRA.

Things are still on the drawing board for what would be one of the biggest single developments in Dorchester history. Right now, Dot Block is slated to include 420 housing units, including condos, as well as 68,000 square feet of retail. The project would unfold over several buildings (more than 10, in fact) and include a 400-space garage. Stay tuned.