A Tale of Two Cities

Both Boston, where it's the best of times and the worst of times

The streets of its rich residential heart, Back Bay and Beacon Hill, are shady and civilized, block after block of stately 19th century town houses. The symphony and principal museum are among the world's best. Fine colleges help make the city an enormous intellectual hot tub, at once invigorating and smug. Now Boston's boosters can brag about more than old-shoe gentility: over the past decade a decrepit waterfront district has been intelligently transformed into a swank commercial and residential quarter whose centerpiece, the Faneuil Hall-Quincy Market showplace, draws natives...