Game of chance

As Middleborough residents prepare to vote on allowing the Wampanoag tribe to build a casino in their town and Massachusetts decides on the wisdom of legalizing casino gambling in general, today's Globe takes a look at the effect that Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun have had on the Connecticut towns that surround those two casinos.

When it comes to the merits of developing such an enterprise at Suffolk Downs, we have to keep in mind that the logistics and their consequences would be different here in an urban setting. We already have people, traffic, crime, etc. Still, there would be new challenges in each of those areas and, therefore, we should carefully consider the positives and negatives before embracing the idea.

As for Middleborough, I haven't seen polls on the matter, but it wouldn't surprise me if a significant number of people in the town concluded that a resort casino would change their community permanently -- and not necessarily for the better.