In Praise of Boston's Most Creative Snowmasters

The winter of 2015 will go down as one of the most unforgiving in recent memory. Spring, believe it or not, is less than 20 days away. But this week's weather is a reminder for some northeast cities that escaping winter is going to take time; more snow dumped across the East Coast on Thursday, from North Carolina all the way up to—you guessed it—Boston. The neo-North Pole.

Writing in CityLab in February, Sascha Haselmayer explained how this year's record-setting snowfall led Boston to implore residents to be exceptionally proactive. After spending $30 million on snow response in January alone, the city welcomed the input from local entrepreneurs. "Once you open up a problem to citizens, innovators and entrepreneurs, almost anything is possible," Haselmayer wrote, suggesting the 2015 weather, in turn, encouraged "citizen engagement on a new level."