The BPDA board yesterday approved Core Development's plans for three life-sciences lab and office buildings - two 13 stories, one 12 - as part of its massive On the Dot project to remake a stretch of Dorchester Avenue from Andrew Square north along the Southampton train yard. Read more.

The Boston City Council today approved a measure to set up a planning department as the first major step towards abolishing the BPDA and giving the mayor and the council - and residents more of a direct say in how Boston grows. Read more.

The BPDA board last week approved plans for a two-building life-sciences complex at 66 Cambridge St. in Sullivan Square, an Orange Line stop away from where another developer says it will soon file detailed plans for a 700-unit residential complex. Read more.

A New York developer has filed plans with the BPDA to replace offices in three adjoining buildings it owns on Washington, Water and Washington, Water and Devonshire streets in Downtown Crossing with apartments, under a city pilot aimed at giving tax breaks to building owners who do just that. Read more.

A group of 11 Charlestown Navy Yard residents today sued the BPDA and two non-profit groups, saying the approval process for a plan to turn a closed hotel into an apartment building where nearly half the units are meant for people trying to get out of homelessness not only violated state bidding laws and their own constitutional rights but will lead to sick, hungry, jobless addicts wandering and maybe even dropping dead in the streets of the historically important neighborhood. Read more.

Epiphany School, located right next to the MBTA's Shawmut Red Line stop, today sued the BPDA for its decision to approve a four-story, affordable apartment building next door. Read more.

A local developer has filed plans to convert a small Franklin Street office and retail building into housing, under the city's new program aimed at bringing life back downtown through tax breaks for office-to-residential conversions. Read more.

Scape, now nearing completion on an apartment building on Boylston Street in the Fenway, wants to increase the size of its proposed 2 Charlesgate, near the Bowker Overpass and the turnpike, from 23 to 30 floors - and to eliminate the 75 parking spaces it once planned there. Read more.

On April 25, 1968, South End residents held sit-in at what was then a Boston Redevelopment Authority office in an old fire house on Warren Avenue in the South End, to protest the authority's large-scale South End urban-renewal plans that would force thousands of residents to move.

The former fire house (on the right) and the neighboring building with one of the area's wholesale florists, remain to this day, now as condos: Read more.