Why Boston Makes No Sense as a U.S. City

Boston looks like a typical old East Coast city on the map — but in reality, more than half of the city you see isn't natural land at all. It was built on top of the sea. Shaped by a tiny peninsula that was nearly an island, hills that were carved down and dumped into the water, a bay that was filled in to double the city's size, and a tangle of streets that follow no grid at all, Boston is built around patterns that make it feel unlike almost any other city in the country.