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DC and Boston are both relatively small cities with urbanized suburbs. DC's big 4 are Bethesda, Silver Spring, Arlington and Alexandria. Boston's big 4 are Chelsea, Somerville, Cambridge, and Brookline. DC's (with the exception of Alexandria) tend to be newer street car suburbs with modern development around the metro stations, Boston's are more traditionally urban and consistently dense (triple deckers/apt buildings/row houses), but don't have as much high rise TOD development (with the exception of Kendal Sq).
Which to people think are more interesting/vibrant/walkable?
How is Chelsea part of the "big 4"? Newton borders Boston, has a considerably bigger population, and is MUCH nicer. I'm originally from Boston and Chelsea is an afterthought at best. No offense, but by including freaking Chelsea instead of Newton, you really did Boston a disservice.
Anyway, I've lived in Cambridge, Somerville, and Brookline. I prefer Cambridge, but they all have their good qualities. I mostly grew up in Cambridge, also spent a lot of time living in Somerville. I lived in Brookline for a year or two in my late-teens, early 20s. Brookline had a nice central location and neighborhoods and all, but culturally it was a little different with such a large Jewish population compared to Somerville and Cambridge.
I've also lived in Arlington and Alexandria. I prefer Arlington. I actually had a much bigger and better place in Alexandria, but still preferred Arlington. My place in Arlington was in a better neighborhood closer to the city. Not that the place in Alexandria was in a bad neighborhood, it was just comparatively worse.
I liked living in Arlington and Alexandria, but Cambridge and Somerville feel like home, and Brookline is really nice for the most part. So I'd rate Boston suburbs as higher than D.C. suburbs, especially when you include Newton instead of freaking Chelsea (sorry).
This only makes sense if you’re the kind of suburbanite who refers to everything within city limits as “downtown”. Those areas look and feel nothing like Downtown Crossing.
I'm most familiar with Cambridge and there's absolutely no way I'd ever confuse it with Downtown Crossing...like, ever.
i disagree that that just because a city is annexed by another city automatically makes it urban; the same way that just because a city breaks off from another city automatically turns it suburban.
i was gonna' post ths stats for the d.c. cities as well but there seems to be no consensus of their borders (aside from alexandria). the other three have no municipal boundary; no police department; school department; ...
everything surrounding boston (massachusetts ?) is either a city or a town.
is there a list of the municipalities that share a border with washington, d.c.
from wikipedia:
Quote:
Boston is surrounded by the "Greater Boston" region and is contiguously bordered by the cities and towns of Winthrop, Revere, Chelsea, Everett, Somerville, Cambridge, Watertown, Newton, Brookline, Needham, Dedham, Canton, Milton, and Quincy.
the d.c. list seems much more nebulous:
Quote:
The District is bordered by Montgomery County, Maryland, to the northwest; Prince George's County, Maryland, to the east; and Arlington and Alexandria, Virginia, to the south and west.
This only makes sense if you’re the kind of suburbanite who refers to everything within city limits as “downtown”. Those areas look and feel nothing like Downtown Crossing.
yeah, when we would go shopping downtown, we would go to filines; not assembly square.
How is Chelsea part of the "big 4"? Newton borders Boston, has a considerably bigger population, and is MUCH nicer. I'm originally from Boston and Chelsea is an afterthought at best. No offense, but by including freaking Chelsea instead of Newton, you really did Boston a disservice.
Anyway, I've lived in Cambridge, Somerville, and Brookline. I prefer Cambridge, but they all have their good qualities. I mostly grew up in Cambridge, also spent a lot of time living in Somerville. I lived in Brookline for a year or two in my late-teens, early 20s. Brookline had a nice central location and neighborhoods and all, but culturally it was a little different with such a large Jewish population compared to Somerville and Cambridge.
I've also lived in Arlington and Alexandria. I prefer Arlington. I actually had a much bigger and better place in Alexandria, but still preferred Arlington. My place in Arlington was in a better neighborhood closer to the city. Not that the place in Alexandria was in a bad neighborhood, it was just comparatively worse.
I liked living in Arlington and Alexandria, but Cambridge and Somerville feel like home, and Brookline is really nice for the most part. So I'd rate Boston suburbs as higher than D.C. suburbs, especially when you include Newton instead of freaking Chelsea (sorry).
As other people have noticed, the dense urban districts in DC suburbs are often retail and job centers that can be a pretty good distance from downtown DC while those being discussed for Boston urban suburbs are much more closer to downtown Boston and the ones as far out as DC's don't seem to have the comparably large retail and job centers. I think a lot of that has to do with the way transit further out from the respective core downtowns favors DC's suburbs a bit with these places getting frequent service even quite a distance out with good connections to rail lines that also have frequent service which allows larger job and retail centers to develop since commuters and intraregional visitors over a larger shed can get to them fairly easily.
This site shows same scale spread of their rapid transit systems and there's a significant difference between the two. Boston's system does have an additional light rail system, that doesn't go far out into the metro and is relatively slow. Boston also has a much larger commuter rail system, but that is both pretty infrequent and incredibly disjointed where there's a large system serving the north and an even larger system serving the west and south, but requiring a pretty time-consuming transfer in between rather than just having them connected (a connection which would also solve the problem of peak service frequency since it solves bottlenecks in the system). It seems to me these differences in transit linkage has a decent chance of explaining some of the difference between the urban suburbs.
Neither Cambridge, Somerville, nor Chelsea share a land border with Boston. Two are separated by water, and the other is separated by Cambridge. They’re connected to Boston in the same way that Arlington and Alexandria are connected to DC. If we’re only comparing areas further away from the city, I’d argue the DC doesn’t have any actual urban suburbs.
Somerville shares a land border with Charlestown (Sullivan Square area) which is part of Boston. I know that for a fact. Just walk around the Sullivan Square area and you'll see signage indicating that. Cambridge also has a land border with Charlestown close by. A lot of people might not know this because it's a part of Charlestown that's isolated from the main part. Sort of the same thing with Bunker Hill Community College. It's also part of Charlestown, but it's sort of isolated and close to Somerville, Cambridge, Medford and Everett.
Last edited by John Rose; 10-29-2017 at 05:13 AM..
I voted for Boston. Was tempted to vote for Miami since I live in South Florida now and like it for the most part, but Boston is still my "home", I suppose. I also enjoyed living in the Washington, D.C. area for a while.
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This site shows same scale spread of their rapid transit systems and there's a significant difference between the two. Boston's system does have an additional light rail system, that doesn't go far out into the metro and is relatively slow. ...
the boston map seems to be missing the green-line (multi-spur underground/street level trolley) and the silver-line (underground/street level brt).
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