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It is not meant to be an insult as I like Boston alot. I know a fair amount about Boston and its attractions and have visited a number of times. However I am not too familiar with the migration patterns there. All the people I met there personally said they were born there so that is what I based it on.
I guess my reaction reflected my prejudices as I did't like my city being compared to Detriot and Milwuakee
Portland, Oregon, has a strange characteristic in that it contains a ton of people who have moved here from elsewhere, and yet it's also extremely provincial in outlook. It's an unusual juxtaposition to say the least.
Location: from houstoner to bostoner to new yorker to new jerseyite ;)
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I think most major cities are filled with transplants from elsewhere, hence how they got to be major cities. I would think minor, mid-sized cities would be a bit more provincial. Portland seems to only have started growing fairly recently, which is maybe why the odd juxtaposition; it hasn't hit the tipping point yet and is still teetering on that edge. Austin's kind of like that, too. Diversity plays a role, or lack thereof. I hear it's getting better in PDX, but that it's still a very white city, so I guess longtime natives haven't been exposed to many other lifestyles and cultures. Not like in a city like Houston where people have been coming in from all over the world for decades. Oh, yeah, industry probably plays a role, too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TomDot
This is a question that can be answered via actual statistics and probably should not be left to boardmember prejudices.
I would love to see some statistics on this. Too lazy to look them up myself.
Last edited by houstoner; 10-23-2008 at 07:39 PM..
For most I say New York because of it's size (pop.) and immigrants.
One of the least must be Pittsburgh from what I hear all the time. It's believable. There's people here who have never been downtown nor to other areas of the city/suburbs. Women complain they can't find a man because they don't want to leave their own little suburbs. A common wish is to someday see the ocean.
I can't believe people think Boston doesn't have big transient population. First of all, stats tell the opposite story. And anyway being the top university city in the US it obviously has a huge student population, and on top of that it recieves a lot of professionals. how do you think the city became so expensive and gentrified?
That doesn't mean Boston is not provincial though - I think we're misxing categories here. As well as a big transient population Boston also has lots of people who have been living there for generations, and I suppose you could say they're provincial - I mean there are even people in South Boston who see themselves as a separate city.
On the other hand, very transient cities which see themselves as most cosmopolitan can be surprisingly provincial. San Francisco, for instance is like a big self-conscious bubble, and even New York's New-York-centrism could be defined as provincial in a way.
Location: northern Vermont - previously NM, WA, & MA
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The reason why people have a dual impression of Boston being both transient and provincial comes down to city and suburbs. In Boston & Cambridge due to the fact that there are several colleges and universities plus 20 & 30 somethings from all over that desire to live in the urban neighborhoods, he majority of the residents are very transients like many other major cities.
The suburbs of Boston on the otherhand are very provincial. Towns on the north shore like Revere, Peabody, & Gloucester are loaded with townies. The South Shore has a lot of townies also whom a generation or 2 ago were residing in the urban confines of Boston but migrated to the suburbs in the 60's, 70's, & 80's and have since remained. Metro West surburbs like Waltham and Framingham are perhaps more transient as there is a lot of transient based employment in the western suburbs.
Seattle definitely has tons of transplants. I heard once on KUOW (Seattle's NPR station) that something like 1/3 of the residents had moved there in the previous 5 years. I don't know how true that statistic is, but lots of people have definitely moved to Seattle. I also don't put much faith in anecdotal research, but when I lived there, my closest friends were from Minnesota, Illinois, South Dakota, Wyoming. I knew far more transplants than natives.
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