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Location: That star on your map in the middle of the East Coast, DMV
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Toure
Not only the US, but the world! Lol!!! But forreal, look at it like this:
Harrisburg is the capital of P.A. but at the end of the day Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are better, and while all the stuff goes on in the capital the eyes are not focused there, but on the bigger/better cities. Same for Sacramento for C.A.... You get my point? While the capital is D.C. that doesn't equate the best/largest cities. There's many cities in the is better then D.C.
Hope y'all got my point!
False! There are not "many" cities in the country better than D.C. maybe 2 or 3 max. DC is unequivocally a top 5 American city.
False! There are not "many" cities in the country better than D.C. maybe 2 or 3 max. DC is unequivocally a top 5 American city.
In importance, yes...but it's hard to say it's unequivocally a Top 5 city. Personally I would have it right on the fringe of 5/6. I definitely prefer NYC, Boston, and Chicago over DC and could interchange it with Philadelphia and San Francisco (though admittedly, I've never been to SF). It all depends on what you're looking for in a city for it to be "best".
Because of this thread, it seems like a good time to bump the old thread. Despite having the highest growth of the northeastern metro areas (not including Washington), the gap between Boston and DC/SF seems to only be increasing.
I know SF has come under fire in recent years for high COL and homelessness. Do folks think there’s any chance for the Boston area to catch up in the next decade?
Last edited by Boston Shudra; 11-04-2020 at 11:30 PM..
I agree, Boston has room to grow. I was just saying it doesn't have nearly as much room to grow as D.C. I was just responding to the question saying Boston will not pass D.C. again. Also, as for the bolded above, do you have any idea what D.C. looked like just 10-20 years ago? This was our nation's capitol. This is what people saw when they visited America:
Boston was hit much harder by white flight and deindustrialization than DC. You can see that in its huge and swift Population decline from 1950-1980. DC just neer was a buzzing city, to begin with, took in many black migrants who were poor for a while and then crack hit. Boston was arguably just as much of a Phoenix rising from the ashes as DC. There many pictures and videos of a severely blighted abandoned Boston. Im not particularly impressed by DCs comeback story-especially when its sitting on massive amounts of federal money and following the trend of cities like NYC and Boston. It was just late to the party and rebounded very quickly. But its downfall is not especially remarkable aside from high violent crime and the impact of crack cocaine. Boston of the 1960s and even into the mid-1990s was a very rough place with many many socially dysfunctional and blighted areas.
Why DC was so late to the revitalization party (by ~15 years) im not entirely sure.
All this being said no I do not think Boston will surpass DC in population. But it could be on the same tier as DC-if its not now.
Dc won't have 700,000 residents in the next 7 years
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fastphilly
The other Northeastern metros will cannibalize Boston with future business ventures since it has close proximity to those locations. Boston's lack of a variety of non-stop international flights compared to NY, DC and SF will hinder Boston's luring power for companies with strong international business ties. Business travelers despise connections to far flung locations.
Lol its really hard to predict the future. Two examples. Boston beat all northeastern metros this decades except DC (if you count DC as northeast)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Malloric
So just specifically,
Lower foreign investment, smaller university endowments, fewer nobel laureates, less ambitious projects, less immigration compared to San Francisco. On the upsides, better unemployment and more biosci.
And some things just change. Boston saw a little more foreign-born growth than San Fran this decade and I think its currently more ambitious with its projects and residential developments.
Last edited by BostonBornMassMade; 11-05-2020 at 12:24 AM..
Because of this thread, it seems like a good time to bump the old thread. Despite having the highest growth of the northeastern metro areas (not including Washington), the gap between Boston and DC/SF seems to only be increasing.
I know SF has come under fire in recent years for high COL and homelessness. Do folks think there’s any chance for the Boston area to catch up in the next decade?
With declining birth rates and gentrification, I don’t see how the population of Boston doesn’t decline. Unless it’s public housing, the poor people with the highest density will be replaced by childless white collar professionals. The white collar professionals mostly sell to other childless white collar professionals and bail out to the suburbs if they pop out kids.
With declining birth rates and gentrification, I don’t see how the population of Boston doesn’t decline. Unless it’s public housing, the poor people with the highest density will be replaced by childless white collar professionals. The white collar professionals mostly sell to other childless white collar professionals and bail out to the suburbs if they pop out kids.
Boston still has quite a few middle class households. The poor aren’t going to be easily pushed into Boston’s wealthy and expensive suburbs. People say they will buy it’s really not feasible. The housing thomey need really isn’t there.
Despite all of Boston’s gentrification it hasn’t seen a net loss in Black, Latino or poor families/households. In fact it’s still gaining. This stand in contrast to SF, Chicago, NYC, DC, Atlanta (city propers). Naturally, it should see more displacement but I think that the high immigrant population base population means that its population really isn’t that well connected to other parts of the US to be able to easily move out of state. And it’s very difficult to get pushed into suburbs because suburbs offer scant affordable housing in relation to Boston. There’s very little housing availability or turnover in Dorchester Roxbury Mattapan. People are anchored there or confined there by various affordable housing programs and government programs.
A quick peruse of Zillow or trulia will reveal that the cheapest and most abundant apartment are in Allston/Brighton where college students have always even.
All this being said between 2018 and 2019 Boston registered growth of less than 2,000 people. I don’t see the city continuing to attract and inordinate amount of white collar professionals
The other Northeastern metros will cannibalize Boston with future business ventures since it has close proximity to those locations. Boston's lack of a variety of non-stop international flights compared to NY, DC and SF will hinder Boston's luring power for companies with strong international business ties. Business travelers despise connections to far flung locations.
Because of this thread, it seems like a good time to bump the old thread. Despite having the highest growth of the northeastern metro areas (not including Washington), the gap between Boston and DC/SF seems to only be increasing.
I know SF has come under fire in recent years for high COL and homelessness. Do folks think there’s any chance for the Boston area to catch up in the next decade?
Well, what are Boston's strengths and weaknesses? Obviously it has great research universities and it has the bonus of being both a state capital and the economically largest city for quite a whiles. It also has a decent port. The high COL is a large weakness as that means growth can be constrained by real estate prices both in terms of population and the high threshold for starting a business especially in the rocky early years. The other major weakness is that MA as a state has a terrible federal revenue to federal spending ratio, among the worst per capita. Another is its reputation for a sort of stodginess that maybe doesn't attract as large a cohort of people--it's okay for parts of Boston to be seen as stodgy as long as there are other parts that have a reputation of not being so as long as that's true and well-communicated. So what can make Boston somewhat mitigate its weaknesses and play to its strengths?
I think for high real estate prices, I think two major steps would probably do a world of good for Boston.
One of these is to greatly improve its transportation infrastructure so that people and businesses can be further out where land is cheaper and still have easy access from different points without points being very inconvenient and isolated. Incentivizing denser development for greater square footage among these nodes would make it alright. I think the best way forward for Boston in that regard is beefing up its commuter rail system to act like a S-Bahn/RER type of system which means having the through-running tunnel between North and South Station and running at much greater frequencies so that there are more shorter single-seat rides, and if needing a transfer, the wait for a transfer is also short. This would also mean opening up the large yards and interlocking at South Station (and to a lesser extent, North Station) for development which are both in high-cost, desirable parts of the city and the numerous terminal berths aren't necessary with a through-running operation. Further on, it would mean expanding the system even farther out and have larger parts of New England economically tied as part of an expanded Greater Boston area.
The other step is to decommission Logan Airport and have an international airport further out with a fast express train (as part of this expanded MBTA Commuter Rail S-Bahn/RER system) to downtown Boston. Not only does this open up the considerable, close-to-downtown and therefore expensive lands, of Logan Airport itself, but also means that the surrounding region can be allowed to build to far greater heights and add a lot more square footage per parcel of land.
As for the reputation, I think you might've mentioned something about the limited liquor licenses within the city of Boston. Well, that'd be a small step. I think the larger step would be that with the greatly improved transit access, then parts of this expanded Greater Boston area can develop a greater reputation somewhat independently of Boston. Providence would be a good example of that, but it's currently not part of the Boston MSA because there simply isn't enough back and forth between the two currently separate MSAs which could greatly change with greatly improved transit access and frequency especially with nodes in between being developed.
Well, what are Boston's strengths and weaknesses? Obviously it has great research universities and it has the bonus of being both a state capital and the economically largest city for quite a whiles. It also has a decent port. The high COL is a large weakness as that means growth can be constrained by real estate prices both in terms of population and the high threshold for starting a business especially in the rocky early years. The other major weakness is that MA as a state has a terrible federal revenue to federal spending ratio, among the worst per capita. Another is its reputation for a sort of stodginess that maybe doesn't attract as large a cohort of people--it's okay for parts of Boston to be seen as stodgy as long as there are other parts that have a reputation of not being so as long as that's true and well-communicated. So what can make Boston somewhat mitigate its weaknesses and play to its strengths?
I think for high real estate prices, I think two major steps would probably do a world of good for Boston.
One of these is to greatly improve its transportation infrastructure so that people and businesses can be further out where land is cheaper and still have easy access from different points without points being very inconvenient and isolated. Incentivizing denser development for greater square footage among these nodes would make it alright. I think the best way forward for Boston in that regard is beefing up its commuter rail system to act like a S-Bahn/RER type of system which means having the through-running tunnel between North and South Station and running at much greater frequencies so that there are more shorter single-seat rides, and if needing a transfer, the wait for a transfer is also short. This would also mean opening up the large yards and interlocking at South Station (and to a lesser extent, North Station) for development which are both in high-cost, desirable parts of the city and the numerous terminal berths aren't necessary with a through-running operation. Further on, it would mean expanding the system even farther out and have larger parts of New England economically tied as part of an expanded Greater Boston area.
The other step is to decommission Logan Airport and have an international airport further out with a fast express train (as part of this expanded MBTA Commuter Rail S-Bahn/RER system) to downtown Boston. Not only does this open up the considerable, close-to-downtown and therefore expensive lands, of Logan Airport itself, but also means that the surrounding region can be allowed to build to far greater heights and add a lot more square footage per parcel of land.
As for the reputation, I think you might've mentioned something about the limited liquor licenses within the city of Boston. Well, that'd be a small step. I think the larger step would be that with the greatly improved transit access, then parts of this expanded Greater Boston area can develop a greater reputation somewhat independently of Boston. Providence would be a good example of that, but it's currently not part of the Boston MSA because there simply isn't enough back and forth between the two currently separate MSAs which could greatly change with greatly improved transit access and frequency especially with nodes in between being developed.
The MBTA has committed to accelerating headways (15 minutes headways) and electrifying most of the commuter rail over the course of 30 years and ~41 Billion dollars. And bringing fares down to a more reasonable price point.
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