Home rule: the creation of local historic districts in the New Boston, 1953 to 1983

As large-scale, modernist urban renewal projects advanced following World War II, residents of Boston’s historic neighborhoods pushed back, asserting the value of the existing built environment and enlisting new strategies, like local historic districts, to mediate change. Over time, these defenders of traditional urbanism changed from relatively conventional 1950s home- and business-owners to more countercultural, back-to-the-city technocrats, the advance guard of a new middle class. Employing previously unexplored government archives and public documents, extensive contemporaneous newspaper reports, and interviews with current and former neighborhood activists, “Home Rule” analyzes historic districting as a social movement, tracing how adherents of this cause mobilized resources to effect the policy changes they sought. While the growth of the historic preservation movement in the interwar South has been well documented, the adoption of preservation planning techniques in the post-war North is less well studied. The first chapter investigates the effort to create the first historic district in the urban North on Beacon Hill, a campaign that took place against the backdrop of a destructive urban-renewal project in the nearby West End. A neighborhood association spearheaded the effort, carefully building support, consistent with the consensus culture of the 1950s. The chapter also examines the expansion of the district and challenges to its authority. The highly contested movement to designate the Back Bay occupies the second chapter, pitting a powerful mayor and his deep-pocketed allies determined to insert high-rise towers in a historically low-rise area against a large and well-heeled neighborhood association. The third chapter examines the drive to create a statutory Landmarks Commission to regulate historic resources citywide. The chapter also explores two attempts to designate historic districts after the creation of the new agency, one effort on Ashmont Hill that failed and another in West Back Bay that succeeded. The movement to designate three contiguous historic districts – the St. Botolph Street area, Bay Village, and the South End – constitutes the fourth and last chapter. These efforts exemplify the rediscovery of urban life by an educated, progressive middle class who negotiated with various ethnic and racial minorities, transformed the city, and reinvented urban renewal.2018-08-11T00:00:00

Design and baseline characteristics of the finerenone in reducing cardiovascular mortality and morbidity in diabetic kidney disease trial

Background: Among people with diabetes, those with kidney disease have exceptionally high rates of cardiovascular (CV) morbidity and mortality and progression of their underlying kidney disease. Finerenone is a novel, nonsteroidal, selective mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist that has shown to reduce albuminuria in type 2 diabetes (T2D) patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) while revealing only a low risk of hyperkalemia. However, the effect of finerenone on CV and renal outcomes has not yet been investigated in long-term trials. Patients and Methods: The Finerenone in Reducing CV Mortality and Morbidity in Diabetic Kidney Disease (FIGARO-DKD) trial aims to assess the efficacy and safety of finerenone compared to placebo at reducing clinically important CV and renal outcomes in T2D patients with CKD. FIGARO-DKD is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group, event-driven trial running in 47 countries with an expected duration of approximately 6 years. FIGARO-DKD randomized 7,437 patients with an estimated glomerular filtration rate >= 25 mL/min/1.73 m(2) and albuminuria (urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio >= 30 to <= 5,000 mg/g). The study has at least 90% power to detect a 20% reduction in the risk of the primary outcome (overall two-sided significance level alpha = 0.05), the composite of time to first occurrence of CV death, nonfatal myocardial infarction, nonfatal stroke, or hospitalization for heart failure. Conclusions: FIGARO-DKD will determine whether an optimally treated cohort of T2D patients with CKD at high risk of CV and renal events will experience cardiorenal benefits with the addition of finerenone to their treatment regimen. Trial Registration: EudraCT number: 2015-000950-39; ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02545049

Urban Preservation and Renewal: Designating the Historic Beacon Hill District in 1950s Boston

This article takes up the creation of Boston’s Beacon Hill historic district during the 1950s as a significant chapter of preservation planning history. Inspired by similar efforts in the South, this campaign succeeded in a decade commonly associated with conformity and consensus, suburbia and urban renewal, obsolescence and progress. Activists on Beacon Hill persuaded their neighbors and city and state officials that the heretofore little-used technique of historic district designation should be employed in a big, northern industrial city. In so doing, they led the way for the more widespread historic preservation movement that followed during the 1960s and 1970s