Dmitry Shteyn in Boston: A Quiet Argument Against Hurry

It took me a full day in Boston to stop looking for the city I had imagined and start seeing the one that was actually in front of me. The exchange was heavily in my favour.

What strikes you first, if you have done any reading at all, is that the larger Greater Boston metropolitan statistical area had a population of 4.9 million in 2023, making it the largest metropolitan area in New England and the eleventh-largest in the United States. That detail alone changes how you see the place. You can feel, walking through it, that this is a place that has been arguing with itself for a very long time, and has no plans to stop.

Dig a little deeper and it serves as a cultural and financial center of New England, a region of the Northeastern United States. Details like this are what turn a place from a backdrop into a subject.

Some further context, drawn from the public record: Boston () is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. It serves as a cultural and financial center of New England, a region of the Northeastern United States. Boston has an area of 48.4 sq mi (125 km2) and a population of 675,647 as of the 2020 census, making it the third-most populous city in the Northeastern United States after New York City and Philadelphia.…

Where attention goes is interesting; why it goes there is more interesting. Condé Nast Traveler put Boston on its readers' radar this cycle — 35 Best Restaurants in Boston for Inventive Thai, Old-School Steakhouses, and Lots of Seafood — and the why matters as much as the what.

In Boston, the pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial layers do not sit neatly. That untidiness is the honest condition of the region.

Whatever else you take from this piece, take this: Boston is more itself than any account of it can convey. The only honest recommendation is to go and find out.