In a recent Commonwealth Magazine article, Christopher Lydon pilloried the Globe for abandoning the city for the suburbs and beyond. In today's paper, the Globe, in a series of articles, indirectly responds by exploring how the city is changing around them.

They start out on the front page with a look at the fleeing middle class who are leaving mostly for financial reasons, although the weather and traffic also play a role.

Only 8 percent of respondents indicated crime as a major factor for their move, while 9 percent cited the public schools, 12 percent cited Massachusetts' liberal bent, and 13 percent its political leadership.

If crime isn't a big concern for the middle class, it certainly has an impact on the working class. Crime comes up in an article on two streets in Dorchester that have been the scene of regular firearm violence. There's an appearance by a family that bought a condo on Hamilton Street and is now "jarred" by the violence in the area, and the woman from Wendover Street who, when vacationing in Florida, was tempted to never return.

And then there's money. Earlier this year the Globe noted the increase in millionaires in the area and today in a cover magazine article they pay homage to the buying power of the new monied class, while modeling them as the new Brahmins.

An Ideas section article by Michael Jonas asks if Boston has become an "ephemeral city." Pitting the ideas of Joel Kotkin against Jane Jacobs, he explores whether it's a healthy school system or the presence of a "creative class" that makes a city viable?

All in all it's not a pretty picture, with the middle class leaving, working class neighborhoods stressed by violent crime and a growing number of millionaires buying up real estate and happily chatting with each other on $5,000 cellphones. But are things all that bad? Jonas says maybe not.

...[A]s real as these concerns may be, Boston doesn't look much today like a city on the brink of ruin. After more than a dozen years not of decay and blight but of resurgent urban neighborhoods, soaring real estate prices, and, until recently, markedly lower crime rates, even Kotkin admits that Boston, with its intrinsic attractions and unrivaled concentration of colleges and universities, may be a place where ephemeral just might work. ''It's an evolution that Boston, due to its many blessings, may be able to survive in reasonably good shape," Kotkin says.

There's cause for concern, especially over how real estate is pricing people from all income levels out of the area. But I'll side with Jonas and take the glass-half-full stance. If worse comes to worse, we can all move to Somerville.