Next New England

While Boston has more than rebounded from the great recession, many of New England’s smaller cities are still feeling the pain of de-industrialization. In Massachusetts, some of these former mill towns are plotting a comeback. We take a look at what two so-called Gateway Cities are doing to provide economic opportunity. We also learn about the down and dirty politics of Providence, Rhode Island in the 1970s and ’80s, when city leaders cozied up to the mob, with the makers of the podcast Crimetown. And with the “Greatest Show on Earth” coming to a close, we pay a visit to a museum dedicated to P.T. Barnum in the showman’s hometown of Bridgeport, Connecticut. A man walks his dog in front of vacant commercial spaces along Main Street in Fitchburg, Mass. (Credit: Jesse Costa/WBUR) Gateway to the American Dream Immigrant workers from Ireland and Germany were some of the first laborers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, filling the city’s 19th-century mill buildings with the hum of tex