A long-contaminated former munitions site in West Concord will be fit for human habitation within five years, federal officials say. But whether anyone ends up living at 2229 Main Street, a designated federal Superfund site, remains to be seen.

More transparency “than ever before” was the promise Gov. Maura Healey made to voters when it came to the issue of public records. The Cambridge Democrat vowed she would break precedent with governors past, who for decades have claimed a blanket exemption from public records law based on a 1997 Supreme Judicial Court decision, shrouding their administrations in opacity. Massachusetts and Michigan are the only states where the governor’s offices claim such an exemption...

An ex-doctor and wife suing over rights to a Mattison Farm property they’ve owned since 1991 say Concord officials’ inaction helped scammers commit title theft. Town officials were not named in still-pending court filings.

The Fore River basin is home the largest concentration of industry south of Boston and for more than 100 years, its residents have lived in the shadow of pollution that has taken a toll on their air quality, water quality, soil and health.

With more than 3,800 new apartments and houses built in Quincy over the last decade, residents say the character of their beloved neighborhoods is being lost to development.

A controversial proposal to expand jet hangar space at Hanscom Field spotlights clashing economic and environmental priorities just as aggressive carbon-cutting measures are being enacted at the state and local levels — including in Concord.

Hospitals are closing at a rate of more than 30 per year, but what happens when a city loses its emergency care?

Owners of nonresident Airbnb-style properties — facing a Dec. 1 deadline that could shut them down — are pushing the Zoning Board of Appeals to reclassify their buildings as “boutique hotels” or “executive suites” and are facing pushback from fed-up neighbors. Property owners have filed 10 applications to reclassify 202 residential apartments since city councilors began debating regulating the short-term stay industry that includes popular sites like Airbnb, Sonder and Homeaway in 2018. Four of

Short-term rental companies will no longer be able to exploit a loophole allowing them to convert clusters of apartments into “executive suites” to skirt a city law that aims to block investors from taking apartments off of the year-round rental market. The zoning commission on Wednesday closed the loophole in the city’s short-term rental ordinance that let investors convert apartments in 11 city neighborhoods into “executive suites” — which are exempt from the ordinance — without any public pr