By Tom Acitelli | Curbed Boston | Feb 21, 2020

Chicago-based L3 Capital, which famously bought the surface parking lot at 149-155 Newbury Street in Back Bay last summer for $40 million, detailed plans for the parcel, which has been billed as the last developable one along the famed drag. It wants to build a five-story retail and office complex there called the Aubry, according to a city filing.

Now to the Hyde Park-Roslindale borderlands, where busy developer City Realty has proposed constructing a 49-unit apartment complex with 61 parking spaces at 375 Cummins Highway. The development would replace what the developer described in a filing as “39,106 square feet of underutilized land.”

Staying in Boston’s outer neighborhoods, federal regulators are considering designating the Neponset River from Hyde Park to Lower Mills in Dorchester as so polluted it qualifies as a Superfund site. That would mean federal funding and expertise to clean it up, which in turn could spark new development along it.

Speaking of decisions that can lead to development, here are five major ones from the past 200 years that contributed to the very shape of modern Boston, including the razing of the West End and the filling in of the Back Bay.

And we updated our map of the projects to follow throughout 2020. Stay tuned.