Is Boston a "Cosmopolitan" city? (Newton, Harvard: apartment, homes)

[sponger42]

Originally Posted by miu

Our Chinatown is amazing considering how little space it has to work with. But I think that our wonderful North End more than balances that out.

No, trust me, it's not. Boston's Chinatown is remarkably anemic for its size. There are ~5 Chinese groceries (counting those on the south side of the freeway), maybe a half-dozen trinket shops, a few hair salons, a few bakeries, and a handful of resturants. Everything is quite spread-out compared to your typical American Chinatown (to say nothing of the PRC or ROC, themselves). The biggest deficit is that Boston lacks any sort of street (or even covered) market. Even LA's barely-existing Chinatown has one. Compared to those I know, Boston's is at the bottom of the list:

San Francisco
New York
Chicago
Los Angeles
Boston

Malden is certainly no stand-in for NYC's Flushing, or LA's Azusa (and environs)

...

I don't really understand the draw of the North End, but perhaps I'm missing something. We've walked all over it looking for something interesting, but besides one main street of Cafe's, and the beautiful old buildings, it seems like a pretty ho-hum place. We've tried a few resturants recommended by locals but found them unimpressive. Have we missed the best parts? Tell me what's fun to do/see/eat/etc. on the North End so we can discover the magic.

[Boston_Burbs]

Originally Posted by sponger42

No, trust me, it's not. Boston's Chinatown is remarkably anemic for its size. There are ~5 Chinese groceries (counting those on the south side of the freeway), maybe a half-dozen trinket shops, a few hair salons, a few bakeries, and a handful of resturants. Everything is quite spread-out compared to your typical American Chinatown (to say nothing of the PRC or ROC, themselves). The biggest deficit is that Boston lacks any sort of street (or even covered) market. Even LA's barely-existing Chinatown has one. Compared to those I know, Boston's is at the bottom of the list:

San Francisco
New York
Chicago
Los Angeles
Boston

Malden is certainly no stand-in for NYC's Flushing, or LA's Azusa (and environs)

...

I don't really understand the draw of the North End, but perhaps I'm missing something. We've walked all over it looking for something interesting, but besides one main street of Cafe's, and the beautiful old buildings, it seems like a pretty ho-hum place. We've tried a few resturants recommended by locals but found them unimpressive. Have we missed the best parts? Tell me what's fun to do/see/eat/etc. on the North End so we can discover the magic.

Its not Italian, but Neptune Oyster is the best seafood restaurant in the city.

[miu]

The charm of the North End? Mike's Pastry? Bova's which is open 24 hours? The saints festivals in the summertime? Narrow streets, very clean and tons of little Italian restaurants. It's just nice to stroll around it.

It just seems to me that when exploring any new city, one HAS to keep an open mind and STOP comparing it to other cities and places ones been especially if that city wasn't the first choice for a visit or a stay. I love Portland, ME and it doesn't have a chinatown. It's just a great walking city and on the ocean. And Boston has good history and age for an American city. No, we will never be London, Paris, Rome of Vienna because they have the jump of many hundreds of years on us. But we have great history (Paul Revere, Old Ironsides, the Tea Party ship), culture, the arts, music (Seiji Osawa, Aerosmith), top universities, so we are a significant international destination both for tourism, business and schooling (Harvard, MIT). We also have great hospitals. Heck, singer Adele had surgery on her vocal chords in Boston!

I think that we do pretty darn good for being such a small footprint city and having such cold winters!

[sponger42]

Yes, I think Boston is great for people who like it. There are many positive aspects to the city, and I think its suburbs are especially good for people with steady jobs who want to raise kids near a safe urban center. And the North End is very pretty and a nice place for a stroll and a snack. I just wondered if we were missing some secret alleyway or something. If we're still around, we'll have to check out the festival, that sounds fun. Thanks for the advice.

If you have to stop comparing a place to other places to appreciate it, then doesn't that indicate that said place is inferior? If you eliminate all your reference points, a mud hut in Timbuktu could be considered cosmopolitan.

[Cliff Clavin]

Originally Posted by sponger42

If you have to stop comparing a place to other places to appreciate it, then doesn't that indicate that said place is inferior? If you eliminate all your reference points, a mud hut in Timbuktu could be considered cosmopolitan.

This mud hut...would it be a split level mid-century hut, or something more contemporary?

[emathias]

Originally Posted by Cliff Clavin

This mud hut...would it be a split level mid-century hut, or something more contemporary?

And mid-which-century?

[bostonguy1960]

Not too many American cities can boast of a Four Seasons AND a Mandarin Oriental hotel, on the same block no less. Isn't the Mandarin one of the best hotel chains, if not the best (I've heard) in the world? Plus, a Neiman-Marcus store in between. And I don't believe they're in Manhattan, just their suburbs?

That's pretty cosmopolitan to me.

But we don't have a Bloomingdale's or Nordstrom downtown. Never understood that. Yes, they're in the region, but not in town.

We have two fancy Equinox health clubs and a fancy Sports Club L.A. at the Ritz. Impressive for a "small city."

[emathias]

Originally Posted by bostonguy1960

Not too many American cities can boast of a Four Seasons AND a Mandarin Oriental hotel, on the same block no less. Isn't the Mandarin one of the best hotel chains, if not the best (I've heard) in the world? Plus, a Neiman-Marcus store in between. And I don't believe they're in Manhattan, just their suburbs?

That's pretty cosmopolitan to me.

But we don't have a Bloomingdale's or Nordstrom downtown. Never understood that. Yes, they're in the region, but not in town.

We have two fancy Equinox health clubs and a fancy Sports Club L.A. at the Ritz. Impressive for a "small city."

Exhibit A for the plaintiff ...

Cosmopolitan places don't use chains to demonstrate how cosmopolitan they are.

[johnathanc]

And being cosmopolitan and being wealthy are two different concepts. You don't necessarily have to be both, you can be one and not the other.

[jackshaw]

I think a lot of this comes down to what each person feels makes a city cosmopolitan. In my mind, whether Boston is cosmopolitan probably doesn't depend in any meaningful way upon whether the public transit system is great, good, or bad. Indeed, I think the question really comes down to what you weight in your definition of cosmopolitan. If you give a lot of weight to fashion (whether industry or fashion forwardness of the downtown population), restaurant quality, advertising or PR industries, you wouldn't find Boston cosmopolitan. Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Milan, and Tokyo probably do much better in these area. [I'm not going to mention NY which seems like the most cosmopolitan city in the world or London by most people's definitions].

But, there is likely a higher concentration in the Boston area than any place in the world of people thinking deeply about important issues including global economy (I had dinner two nights ago with a Harvard economist who is largely focusing on globalization and its impact), major political trends (like the now deceased Sam Huntington), to social/sociological trends (like Bob Putnam), to unusual stuff (some Harvard or MIT prof is arguing that Google is biased against African-Americans because targeted ads come up with bail or prison related ads when the names are Trayvon and DaQuan and not when they are Brad and Tom), to how we can deal more effectively with intellectual property (Lawrence Lessig), to how to turn genomics into medicine (Lander) to the neurology of reading and why dyslexics were likely the leaders of pre-literate days (Maryann Wolf) to obstacles to innovation in big companies (Christensen). These are just drops in the bucket -- people who popped into mind as I was typing. I remember dropping in on Harvard Hillel on the High Holidays one year to hear Michael Walzer, one of the great philosophers of the last generation, talking about what is a just war. You don't find such a concentration of people thinking about important things in a constructive way any place else in the world.

As I mentioned in post #57, there are areas where Boston is the world leader or number 2. To me, they make it a cosmopolitan city in dimensions I care about, but maybe not in dimensions you do. And, at the universities, there is a constant influx of people from around the world, many of whom stay after they complete school.

But, if I were looking for a city that generates popular culture, LA is in its own league. But intellectually? Not so much. UCLA, USC, the Claremont Colleges, and a few others, but not really a place where you find people shaping the way we think about the world in big picture terms. Hard actually to find many places like that in Europe, Taipei, Shanghai, etc., Barcelona, Madrid, or some of the other cities on lists proposed above.

How much of cosmopolitan-ness comes from having good Chinatowns and Little Italies? I'd say Boston is pretty weak on that score (as probably is Taipei with respect to various European or African cuisines or Barcelona) but I don't weight diversity of ethnic restaurants as highly in my sense of what makes a city cosmopolitan as I do talking with people who are trying to think about the world in a serious way and not just our provincial little piece of it.

All-in-all, most folks in the US do not have a sophisticated world view that incorporates an understanding of political economy or foreign cultures. We're pretty myopic here. There are a few cities in the US (largely but not entirely on the East and West Coasts) where a small but higher proportion of the population has a relatively sophisticated world view. Boston is one of those. In my view, despite its failings in food (partial), fashion (complete), style (nearly complete), the higher proportion of sophisticated folks makes it feel cosmopolitan.