Hey, Bostonians. Can we stop complaining about the Big Dig? Yes, it cost almost $15 billion. Yes, it took 15 years to complete. (It was a big job, moving all those utility lines and keeping the cars running overhead.)

It was also worth every penny we spent on it. It has caused the area around it to explode with new housing, offices and restaurants. It has given us Paul Revere Park, City Square Park and the Greenway and their pleasures. It has allowed Bostonians to get to the sea. It’s hard to imagine that Boston would be as prosperous as it is now without that road having been buried.

The Big Dig, however, made Bostonians timid—afraid to spend money, afraid to tackle big projects, afraid to take anything but puny steps. In fact, Jim Stergios, the executive director of the Pioneer Institute, plunged into this pessimistic attitude in an op-ed in the Boston Globe last September 6. He effectively urged Bostonians to leap into bed, cover themselves up and never venture out for fear of overdreaming and overspending. Home of the brave?

Now we learn from Barry Bluestone and his team at the Dukakis Center at Northeastern University that in the next 15 years the Greater Boston Region faces major problems—everyone actually calls them “challenges,” a weak word when you realize how desperate the situation is. Bluestone’s report estimates that if things stay the way they are we’ll have 80,000 additional cars on the road, and Bluestone already estimates the average speed in morning rush hour on the Southeast Expressway is only about nine miles an hour.

Approximately 14,000 more people will be riding the subways. Sixty-three percent more passengers will be flying out of Logan. We’ll be throwing away an additional 130,000 tons of garbage each year. We’ll need 13.5 percent more water, and the only good news is that generally Massachusetts has plenty of water, said Fred Laskey, executive director of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority.

Laskey was the only one to bring good news to last week’s sold-out gathering of Bostonians at A Better City’s conference on the State of the Built Environment at the Seaport Hotel, where Bluestone’s report was center stage. And the conference didn’t even deal with housing, another big hole to fill.

The most shocking news came from Joseph Aiello, chair of the MBTA’s Fiscal Management and Control Board, who revealed that the T can’t spend the money it already has been allotted because its management’s skills are not up to the task. Oh, dear.

Maybe that “challenge” will be met by the extra salaries it will be allowed to pay new, skilled managers who won’t be enticed into the private sector by higher pay. We do have a governor who never wants to spend any money, but might actually be able to fix a few problems. We’ll see.

But we need to expand rapid transit way beyond the Green Line Extension that has caused so much sturm und drang. We need to connect North and South Stations with a tunnel. We need to connect points around the region instead of bringing everything into the hub. We need high speed rail to New York City and Springfield and beyond. We need to fix bridges—it’s boring to repair infrastructure but we must do it. We need to get trash and recycling under control. We need to get vehicles off the roads by taxing miles driven and charging them for coming into the city. (Building a new parking lot at Logan is a good example of early 20^th-century thinking. We should be taking that money and running the Blue Line directly to each terminal.)

All of this doesn’t even address the problem of sea level rise.

Every time Boston has thought big and built big, the payoff has been enormous, especially over time. The arrival of the Massachusetts Bay Colony? Paul Revere, the Adamses, John Hancock and the American Revolution? Filling in the Back Bay? Tunneling the first subway in America? Building an airport close to downtown? (I’ll hear from East Boston on that one, but it has made Boston desirable for business.) Cleaning up Boston Harbor? Building the new convention center? The Big Dig? These activities were big, bold, expensive and fabulously successful. (I’ll acknowledge that the big ideas based on Le Corbusier’s principals—demolition of the old West End and building vast roadways—were terrible big ideas.)

These projects (other than Le Corbusier’s) unleashed untold amounts of economic activity and investment. They immeasurably improved people’s lives—well, maybe not in East Boston with the airport.

As usual, at this conference, there was lots of praise for Boston’s dynamic industries and well-educated talent. The phrase “world-class city” was dropped at least 11 times. But anything world class is bright, bold, the opposite of timid.

The 19^th-century Chicago architect Daniel Burnham is supposed to have said, “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized.” There is some dispute that it was Burnham who said those words.

It doesn’t matter. We need big plans to solve big problems. Big plans stoke the economy and make our lives better. Let’s get our mojo back.

What is this growing obsession with mattresses?

Mattresses—possibly one of the most boring items you’ll ever need or buy—have exploded in heft, risen in price, peppered malls and downtown Boston streets though the growing number of mattress-specialty stores, become a topic of concern in newspaper and magazine articles, been featured in the most expensive ad space, page three, of the New York Times, and remarkably, for a product that no one else but you sees, are now a status symbol.

At least if you have a Louis Vuitton bag, people will know you paid a lot for it even if it still looks like cheap vinyl. With a mattress, however, you can shell out $12,000 for a Duxiana, and no one will notice unless you tell them—or invite them into your bed, but that’s not the topic of this column.

Mattresses are sort of like water—in both the makers have persuaded the public that a low-cost, familiar item now needs to be juiced up and priced at a premium.

Maybe the mattress obsession reveals something about Americans right now. It probably has nothing to do with Donald Trump—although the Trump phenomenon is so weird that we may find Donald Trump behind the mattress thing too. But right now, with no evidence of the brand, Trump Mattresses, I’m going with the idea that we’re susceptible to mattresses because something is going on in our health or culture.

For example, sleep may be a bigger problem for Americans than it used to be. Since I’m the world’s best sleeper—go to bed at a reasonable time, fall asleep immediately, wake up in time to hear Morning Edition—you can’t prove it by me.

So I contacted my niece, Melisa Moore, a Philadelphia-based PhD in clinical psychology and board-certified in behavioral sleep medicine.

She said people appear to be getting less sleep because they are spending more time on devices. She also said that with increasing obesity, some people fall victim to sleep apnea, which interferes with sleep.

Ads for mattresses claim their product will help alleviate neck and back pain, snoring, night sweats and jiggles from your partner if you sleep two to a bed.

Melisa wasn’t so sure about whether a mattress would do all the things the makers claim. “Scientific evidence is scant and not consistent,” she said. “Most studies have not been conducted in the US.”

She said old mattresses that have accumulated dust mites might be problematic for sleepers with asthma or eczema.

Like houses and other things, mattresses have grown bigger. It used to be that couples slept in double beds. Then mattresses became queen and king-size. For the past decade they’ve become McMattresses, as thick as 18 inches. You’ll have to invite Arnold Schwarzenegger over to lift that mattress so you can make the bed.

Melisa said one small study in India found that sleeping on a thin foam mattress less than ten centimeters did lead to increased back pain, but that’s really thin. Otherwise, if a mattress feels comfortable, it probably is, and thickness doesn’t matter.

Consumer Reports has rated 58 mattresses and recommended 24 of them ranging from $470 to $3,000, so it must not be that hard to get a good mattress. But they caution that a mattress labeled firm often isn’t and that price is no indication of quality. They recommended a $500 mattress and did not recommend one costing $7,595. So there you are.

I tried to get an opinion from the mattress industry of why there were so many mattress stores these days and why so much advertising and choice. I was unsuccessful. I called a Houston-based company that owns several different national chains. Their marketing company returned my call but told me that all the people who could answer my questions were busy for the rest of the week.

Then I tried the three Sleepy’s stores that are listed as operating in downtown Boston. No one picked up the phone at any of the them. Maybe they were too busy explaining the finer points to hoards of customers.

It began to look as if there are no secrets to mattresses no matter what the ads say or the sales people recommend. Check Consumer Reports. Then go lie down on a mattress in a store. If it feels good and you can lift it to change the bed, get it. Keep it for as long as it feels comfortable.

Since mattresses have only a little to do with getting a good night’s sleep, Melisa’s recommendations make sense. Keep a consistent sleep/wake schedule. Avoid caffeine, alcohol and nicotine before bed. Don’t nap during the day. And stay off the devices.

You have a taxicab company, or maybe you drive a cab. You paid a lot of money for the medallion that allows you to operate that cab. People trying to hail your cab have no idea whether you are free or have a passenger because, unlike in New York City, the light on the top of the cab signifies nothing.

Your car is a Toyota Camry into which you’ve installed a divider between the front and back seat. Passengers have little room for their feet in the back, but that’s the way it is. The air conditioning in the summer works for you, but your passengers swelter because the small window in the divider lets little cool air into the back.

Your cab is fairly clean, but it’s not exactly inviting. You talk on the phone while you are driving, so your passengers can’t figure out if you are talking to them or someone else. The little screen in your passengers’ face annoys them with ads and strange television re-runs that tell stories that won’t be finished by the time the passenger leaves the cab. Those screens make noise, and the shut-off button often doesn’t work.

If a passenger calls for a cab to pick her up at her house, you don’t necessarily arrive.

You complain about having to take credit cards. If you’re the iconic, comfortable London taxi, you decide not to take them at all or you charge passengers extra for using them.

Half the time—if you’re not a London taxi driver—you don’t know how to get to where the passenger is going, which is fine if the passenger knows how to get there or if you have GPS.

Passengers are used to taxis. The situation has been this way for years. What could go wrong?

You’re a mayor, or maybe a BRA director, or maybe a planner in a large city on the East Coast. Remarkably, lying beside your downtown financial district is a huge hunk of empty land that used to be filled with railroad tracks and now holds acres of parking. Why not expand your city into this barren wasteland?

So you do. While it is empty you dig a tunnel to hold an uncomfortable bus that is slow because it has to change the power source (manually) from electricity to diesel. You design the seats so that people stumble in. The bus goes to the a convention center (sort of—it’s a 15-minute walk) and the airport through the wasteland, but takes four times as long as a taxi to get from the airport to downtown. You figure that’s good enough.

You don’t dig a tunnel in the empty land with true rapid transit that connects outlying places through the empty area to the airport and to South Boston, a sprawling neighborhood that could use more stations. You figure we’re not world class, and only world-class cities do that.

You lay out wide streets. Although you call the empty land the “Innovation District” you don’t employ any of the new technology that can put electrified trolleys powered by safe “third rails” buried in the track in the middle of the street that other cities are now using. In fact, you provide no innovation of any kind.

You have only two bridges to get cars over a waterway. Then you welcome developers who build dozens of new buildings with offices and houses and restaurants and retail to which everyone has to drive.

How could anything go wrong?

You run an airline. You decide you’re not making enough money. So you change out all the seats in your airplanes, placing them so close together that when the seats are upright there is no leg room for anyone older than eight years old and no space for passengers to open their computers. Then you design seats that can recline, a bit.

You charge passengers for luggage. For snacks. For a better seat, maybe on the aisle or in the exit row or a space at the front of the line.

Passengers are mad at you from the time they enter the airport. They begin fighting in the aisles. You blame them for bad behavior.

It’s not your fault. Nothing’s wrong.

A few weeks ago I went to “The Dynamic City,” a conference at Boston University sponsored by Historic New England and two BU departments—the Initiative on Cities and the American and New England Studies Program. The presentations were first-rate, the speakers interesting and the topic of how historic preservation fits into contemporary urban life was one this column sometimes addresses.

Soon it became apparent, however, another dynamic was going on, one I hadn’t expected nor rarely experienced.

This conference was the most diverse in presenters and attendees I had ever been to. Black and whites, Latinos and Englishmen, with at least one American whose parents hailed from India. Young and old, men and women. Lesbians, gays and straights. All this diversity in historic preservation, a movement one might have believed was the interest solely of old, traditional white guys.

But no. Officials of all colors and backgrounds from such places as Lawrence and Holyoke, Detroit and Nashville, Liverpool, England and Houston, Texas, discussed how their cities married their old structures with new needs. A major theme was how to correct the ravages of Le Corbusier’s ideas and 1950s and 1960s city planning that destroyed much of what makes cities vibrant.

All that was good, but the take-away was that older cities can claw their way back because they are in good hands with diverse leaders who understand the need to make cities work for everyone no matter what their race, economic situation or culture. If historic preservation can do that, why can’t everyone else?

Are there other industries, places or events in which people of all backgrounds participate? There is the T, Downtown Crossing and The Children’s Museum. Some schools, both public and private.

And television. News shows are diverse. The most diverse, however, is HGTV. For those of you who haven’t viewed “Love It or List It” or “House Hunters,” I’ll introduce you. These programs are reality TV, real people with all their quirks, questionable judgment and unrealistic expectations. They are taking on house renovations or looking for a house to buy. They are assisted by the stars of the shows who are real estate brokers, interior designers or contractors.

The stars and the real people—homeowners or potential buyers—are often multi-racial, two married people of the same sex, mothers and daughters, a single person. All combinations are unremarkable. It feels natural, not forced. Sometimes I wonder when a multi-racial couple buys a home in a neighborhood in, let’s say, Atlanta, is there fall-out afterwards? The program does not say, but the message it sends is that diversity is as natural as living.

While Historic New England and HGTV may have caught up with the times, an appreciation for diversity has not spilled over onto some of our political leaders. The actions that look like racism are not talked about in the press much, but they are often discussed in private gatherings.

We expect such behavior from Donald Trump, who may still promote the idea that Obama was born in Kenya. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, however, should know better.

McConnell seems offended by having to endure a president whose principal transgression is serving while black in the highest office in the land. Perhaps jealousy also plays a role in McConnell’s insulting treatment of our president. The black man, Obama, is smarter, better looking, better educated and more humane than McConnell. He even has a more attractive family.

Early on McConnell promised not to help Americans prosper, but to make Obama a one-term president. That didn’t work out. Now he is thwarting the appointment of a Supreme Court justice by a president duly elected by the American people. Some columnists claim he is just anti-Democrat, but his extreme, disrespectful behavior smacks of a deeper prejudice.

McConnell’s not the only bigot around. Remember South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson shouting out, “Liar,” during a speech Obama gave to Congress? Or Rand Paul’s description of President Obama as “arrogant.” Sounds like “uppity” to me.

The race-based insults heaved at Obama from McConnell and others are unprecedented since Representative Preston Brooks, also from South Carolina, beat up Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner with his cane. Ted Cruz continues the disrespect, calling the president Barack Obama, not President Obama. It’s all code emphasizing that President Obama is the “other.” Perhaps their disrespect for a black man plays well with their constituency.

It no longer plays well in Boston. The city known for bigotry in the 1970s has changed. I’m writing this column a couple of weeks before it will be published, and it looks as if an anti-discrimination bill will be passed and signed. In 2016, downtown Boston is expensive to live in, and the census still shows little diversity. But the people on the sidewalks of all the downtown neighborhoods come in many colors. If you can afford it, you are welcome here. We don’t care what race, national origin or background you enjoy. If you pick up after your dog and put your trash out responsibly, please move in.

Last year for my birthday one of my daughters gave me flowers. These were not the usual birthday flowers. They were delivered to my door for several weeks from the one-eighth acre garden of Ferriss Buck Donham of Arlington.

The flowers Ferriss provided were different from those available from even the loveliest florist. In spring I got big bleeding hearts, lilies of the valley and tiny violets and primroses. In summer came cranesbills, cosmos and astilbe. In the fall Ferriss brought New England asters and several kinds of chrysanthemums I’d never seen before. Plus, these flowers didn’t have to be flown in from a faraway land.

Ferriss’s offering is a flower CSA—community-supported agriculture. In this arrangement clients pay ahead of time so the farmer has the cash to plant. When the crop is ready the farmer delivers or arranges a pick-up place and time. The steady stream of flowers reminded me of what summers are supposed to be, bountiful and beautiful.

Last year was only Ferriss’s third summer of offering a CSA. “I knew there were vegetable CSAs,” she said. “Why not do one for flowers?” But she has been designing, installing and maintaining gardens for clients for 15 years. She delivered to my house because she doesn’t have many clients yet. Her goal this year is 50, and if she has enough downtown Boston clients she will figure out where to deposit the flowers in central locations. The cost is $100 for five weeks of bouquets in one of three sessions—spring, summer or fall.

Rebecca and Joe Pimentel have a downtown location already. The two met while they were both living on Beacon Hill, but they soon moved to Scituate and started gardening and raising goats and chickens. They finally acquired 240 acres of central Vermont farmland as well as two children. Farming is a good life for a family since both parents, while working hard, are home.

A few years ago they started Sweet Georgia P’s, named after their daughter. They raise 50 dairy goats and 350 layer hens, employ 10 helpers as well as a delivery crew and rarely take a summer vacation. They now deliver produce, eggs, honey, goat cheese, dairy products and pasture-raised, hormone-free beef and pork as well as free-range turkey and chickens to about 100 CSA members on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 3 to 7 p.m. at three downtown locations. They too would add more if the number of clients in an area warrant it. They also serve 10 restaurants and set up shop at farmers’ markets. Rebecca hopes to launch a line of natural skin care products soon.

The cost is $600 for 15 weekly deliveries in a standard size. Deliveries begin in June.

Another kind of CSA is really a CSF. Cape Ann Fresh Catch, the second oldest community-supported fishery in the U.S., delivers fish and prepared foods made of seafood products. Catching fish is not limited to the summer months, so Cape Ann sells shares all year long. They do not yet have a downtown Boston location but would search one out if enough customers signed up. The closest delivery locations to downtown now are in Harvard Square and the South End. Shareholders can sign up for a one or two-pound fillets or a whole fish.

Like all community-supported agriculture or fisheries, what you get is what is available. The week I interviewed Donna Marshall, Cape Ann’s executive director, the boats were bringing in pollack, dabs and flounder. “We never know,” she said, “but at 4 a.m. we get a fax letting us know what the catch is.”

Shareholders sign up for eight weeks of one-pound fillets at $120 or $220 for two-pound fillets. The catch, including scallops, is handled minimally, just rinsed, said Donna. (Some fishmongers plunge scallops in a preservative that makes them white and soggy, something Donna said they would never do.)

These community-supported food delivery services have much in common. They all have websites. Just type their names and they come up. Their products are all local and about as fresh as anything gets. You may not know what you’re getting but with the Internet it is easy to get a recipe for the combination you receive. All of the purveyors said they work with customers who need to tweak an order, whether they are on vacation or need more or less of some product.

Pundits complain that people never cook anymore, but with such products and services as these, it may be that the pundits are wrong.

The City of Boston started planting 1,200 trees along city streets in mid-April and will continue to do so until June. Every neighborhood gets them. Their hired contractor might grind out the stump of a dead tree. Then he’ll refresh the soil in the tree pit, dig the hole, water it, set the tree into it and cover it with soil. Then he’ll add mulch in a raised circle, called a mulch saucer, so that when he waters again the water will soak into the soil near the roots. He’ll come back every two weeks to water again.

You say, that’s a laugh, I’ve never seen any city-hired truck watering a tree. That will change, according to arborist and Parks Department general foreman Max Ford-Diamond. Ford-Diamond can follow the contractor’s movements through the GPS system installed in the trucks, usually Ford F350s with a big water tank in the truck bed.

Here are the trees the city will plant: honey locusts on busy streets with lots of foot traffic and winter salt. “Honey locusts are about as hardy as any tree can be,” said Ford-Diamond.

Tree pits under power lines qualify for flowering crab apples and cherries because these trees don’t grow as tall as Boston’s other favorites. Maples, ginkos, oaks, and shadblow will show up. The Parks Department mixes up the genera so that if blight hits one type of tree, the rest will carry on, I was told several years ago.

Ford-Diamond has always been a tree guy. He went to Norfolk County Agricultural High School in Walpole, got an associate’s degree at the Stockbridge School of Agriculture and earned his bachelor’s from UMass in urban forestry. He is an Mass. Certified Arborist as are the other two Parks Department arborists.

He picked out the 1,200 trees himself, flying to New Jersey in the fall to identify the ones he wanted at the Tuckahoe Nursery. Each tree costs the city between $400 and $750.

The types of trees that typically grow tall in a large yard or in the forest are usually shorter on the street because “they are constrained by the site condition,” said Ford-Diamond. The size of the pit is one important constraint.

Once a tree is planted it is up to the citizens of Boston to help ensure the tree’s survival. Ford-Diamond recommends that nearby home and business owners pour a five gallon bucket of water on the tree a couple of times a week. You can also turn a hose on with a drip for about 30 minutes, since the idea is to water deeply, not just on the surface. The tree roots will follow the water and if surface watering is all that is done, roots will be shallow. This will make the tree more susceptible to damage and it might encourage roots to buckle the sidewalk rather than growing deep into the ground.

If it is 100 degrees for a few days, water more frequently, he said.

Arborists used to use green plastic “gator” bags wrapped around new trees to get trees going with deep drips. But that hasn’t worked out so well, said Ford-Diamond.

Nearby residents often couldn’t figure out whether to put the water in or outside the bag. When the city removed the bags they found the moisture inside had sometimes rotted the bark. Or passersby had used them as trash bins, filling them with cans or bottles. So now the trees are left naked, with the hope that nearby residents can more easily care for them.

Weeding the tree pit, keeping dogs out and picking up trash and litter from the pit will also help the tree thrive. Ford-Diamond does not recommend grates around the tree trunk but he is all for fencing around the tree pit. Just make the street side length removable so if the tree has to be replaced, the fence will not have to be destroyed. He also said to hold on the fertilizer. Unless you test the soil you won’t know what it needs.

Part of caring is watching what happens to the tree. Trees can get hit by unruly drivers parking their car or trucks that can’t see what they are backing into. The city can cut back low-lying limbs on older, taller trees to make room for tall vehicles to be near them without injuring them, but the new trees are vulnerable to all kinds of vehicle menaces.

If your tree gets hits, report it by calling 311, use the 311 app or call the Parks Department at 617-635-4505. Sometimes a tree that has been knocked over can be reset into the ground. You should also report your tree if it looks sick or is damaged in any other way.

Ford-Diamond’s department is always looking for places to put new street trees, so if you want one in front of your house or business and you’re willing to care for it, contact the Parks Department and put in a request to find out if it is possible to plant a tree where you want it to go.

Bostonians are proud of the green canopy that shades the sidewalks for six months of the year. You can see how important the trees are for visual delight if you visit San Francisco. That city is handsome from afar and it is certainly interesting to look at. But its wide concrete sidewalks are cold and uninviting. The city would look much better if they were lined with trees.