help finding a neighborhood near boston (Cambridge, Quincy: condo, how much, townhome)

[mariezdeitsch]

We are moving to Boston and my husband will be working in the in back bay. We want to live in a town that is not suburbs, [all houses and no town center] It is difficult looking on line which communities have this. We don't to be in the city , but be close enough for commuting in. One town that looked interesting in Newbury Port but it is a long commute. Can anyone tell me if there towns outside of the city that are a community?

[CaseyB]

Plenty of suburbs in the greater Boston area have town centers, I don't know what you mean. How much were you looking to spend? Are schools an issue?

[mariezdeitsch]

What I mean is that we don't want to live in a bedroom coummuinty. Schools are not an issue and we are looking for a condo or townhome around 600,000.

[CaseyB]

Well the some of the cities that are right outside of Boston are Cambridge, Newton, Quincy possibly Waltham. Cambridge and Newton would be more expensive. Also Brookline is a town right outside of Boston, but it has an urban feel. Metropolitan Boston is very densely populated so a bedroom community here might be considered a city in other parts of the country. The town of Framingham has about 70,000 people.

I don't know if your husband plans take public transportation or not, but here is a link to the schedules:

MBTA.com > Official Website for Greater Boston's Public Transportation System

What I was trying to say is that you have to go way outside of Boston before you hit the sticks!

[missionhill]

Some Boston suburbs have long histories as towns/communities before they became suburbs. These towns may have centers with public spaces like shops, theaters, restaurants, etc., and a few have closely packed residential areas built before the suburban era--Marblehead and Salem, for example. Concord, Lexington, Hingham, are a few of the old towns that have historic and lively town centers. Some places that really are suburbs have commercial and civic centers that give them a community feeling, like Norwood, Needham and Wellesley, Natick, and Winchester. Some towns have a lot of community activity without much of any center--Lincoln and Carlisle come to mind. Some have symbolic old centers that don't have much going on, like Wayland, Bedford, and Acton. So it's a mixed bag. But regardless of their physical layout, the political structure of New England towns means lots of community activity because they're all independent political units that run their own affairs including their own school systems. There's no county government whatever, so the towns all have an active civic culture--they have to.