Best in the Northeast: Boston

If there's one thing Boston is known for, it’s the Big Dig—the 15-year, $15 billion effort to bury the city’s major traffic artery in tunnels underground. Much derided while it was going on, the project did more than just relieve gridlock on I-93; it also helped spark what the New York Times called “one of the most successful urban renaissance stories in modern American history.”

Gone is the multitiered highway that once bifurcated downtown and the North End. In its place: the 15-acre Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, a 1.5-mile string of five distinct parks that has become a favorite local spot for food-truck dining, browsing outdoor art installations, and taking a spin on the carousel.

“If you look back 25 or 30 years, Boston looked like a declining port city,” says Graham Wilson, director of the Boston University Initiative on Cities. The completion of the Greenway and ongoing development of the South Boston Waterfront tell a different story. Wilson cites GE’s relocation to Beantown as emblematic of the change.