Boston’s “Hogmosh” of Neighborhoods, as Mapped by Bostonians
A new crowdsourced map tracks the ever-changing city—and reveals a Beantown only locals know.
Putting a neighborhood on a map is harder than it sounds. If you live in a neighborhood with a name, you probably think you know its boundaries. But do your neighbors agree? Does the local government? Probably not.
While neighborhoods have roots in concrete things like topography, physical barriers, and architecture, they’re also reflections of the people and communities that reside in them. That leaves their precise location open to interpretation.
Boundaries can also be shifted by a huge array of factors, including demographic changes, road construction (or destruction), and commercial rezoning, to name just a few. Realtors often complicate things by stretching the boundaries of desirable neighborhoods to include nearby homes for sale, or simply inventing new names for
