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Old 06-02-2015, 08:06 PM
 
Location: 42°22'55.2"N 71°24'46.8"W
4,848 posts, read 11,748,741 times
Reputation: 2961

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Quote:
Originally Posted by masshawk View Post
I dunno, "sprawl" has a connotation of urban growth and same-ness to me. Solid development with no breaks in between. If you look at the LA metro area in Google Maps satellite view, it's one nearly continuous block of gray-brown from Santa Monica to San Bernadino. Concrete and subdivided housing tracts all the way through. Same with Houston and San Antonio. Whereas Sudbury and most areas outside 128 are way too leafy for me to consider them part of Boston's sprawl. I mean, there are still actual farms there.

If the corridor from Waltham/Newton to Worcester started really filling in, the green areas shrank dramatically, and you couldn't tell Southborough from Framingham from Wellesley, that's when I'd say we'd hit sprawl. The strip between Medford and Lowell is starting to inch that way it seems, just because those towns are less allergic to development than most of Metrowest. But right now I'd say Worcester, Boston, and Lowell are definitely still discrete and distinct metro areas.
You just explained exactly what I was thinking when I said sprawl. I'm familiar with NYC (heading down to Rutgers), Atlanta, Dallas, and SoCal. Those places define sprawl because once you get away from the city center, it's town after town of the same thing. Lots of houses, stores and concrete. 8-lane county/state roads with strip mall after strip mall for miles on end. Their regular commercial throughways are wider than our interstates. Here in MA when I think of sprawl I'm thinking Norwood, Burlington or Framingham. But we'd need 30 Norwoods adjacent to each other with a couple Sharons in between to start approaching the sprawl of any of those places I mentioned earlier.
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Old 06-02-2015, 08:39 PM
 
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Many of the people working in the Kendall square area live in Boston Cambridge or Somerville. At my company the majority take public transportation. Cambridge has the red line, green line AND commuter rail as transit options.
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Old 06-02-2015, 08:51 PM
 
Location: Westwood, MA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by semiurbanite View Post
Many of the people working in the Kendall square area live in Boston Cambridge or Somerville. At my company the majority take public transportation. Cambridge has the red line, green line AND commuter rail as transit options.
Compared to Boston, public transit into Cambridge isn't great. Compared to almost everywhere else in the state (and the country) it is. While the green line technically goes to Cambridge it's not useful to most people. The Red Line serves a substantially bigger number of Cambridge-bound commuters. If you're not on the red line busses often make more sense from Boston. There's only one commuter rail line, as well, compared to all of the commuter rail lines that go into Boston.

I say this as a regular public transit commuter into Cambridge--commuting into Boston is easier.
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Old 06-02-2015, 08:58 PM
 
Location: USA
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Hartford is the new NYC!
*sarcasm*

No

Please don't make the mistake that southwestern Connecticut did, please. You will regret it. We sprawled too much and it backfired. It's a suburban mess.
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Old 06-02-2015, 08:58 PM
 
Location: 42°22'55.2"N 71°24'46.8"W
4,848 posts, read 11,748,741 times
Reputation: 2961
Quote:
Originally Posted by semiurbanite View Post
Many of the people working in the Kendall square area live in Boston Cambridge or Somerville. At my company the majority take public transportation. Cambridge has the red line, green line AND commuter rail as transit options.
Kendall is full of young workers, but don't forget all the people with families who commute by bus from Arlington and Belmont. I feel like your reply was meant for another thread we had on commuting to Kendall Square though.
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Old 06-02-2015, 09:01 PM
 
Location: 42°22'55.2"N 71°24'46.8"W
4,848 posts, read 11,748,741 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HumpDay View Post
Hartford is the new NYC!
*sarcasm*

No

Please don't make the mistake that southwestern Connecticut did, please. You will regret it. We sprawled too much and it backfired. It's a suburban mess.
What's wrong w/living and working in Fairfield county and avoiding NYC altogether? Living in Darien and commuting to Stamford sounds like a good life to me. It's like the equivalent of living in Lexington and commuting to Waltham, but Darien is nicer than Lexington and Stamford is much cooler than Waltham
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Old 06-02-2015, 09:02 PM
 
3,176 posts, read 3,665,577 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jayrandom View Post
Compared to Boston, public transit into Cambridge isn't great. Compared to almost everywhere else in the state (and the country) it is. While the green line technically goes to Cambridge it's not useful to most people. The Red Line serves a substantially bigger number of Cambridge-bound commuters. If you're not on the red line busses often make more sense from Boston. There's only one commuter rail line, as well, compared to all of the commuter rail lines that go into Boston.

I say this as a regular public transit commuter into Cambridge--commuting into Boston is easier.
Correct. I'm a daily commuter to Cambridge via commuter rail. It is tolerable on a good day (and barely so). The people in my office who do not live in Cambridge or Somerville have little love for the commute. In fact I have co-workers living in Boston who spend almost as much time commuting each way as I do (which is insane).
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Old 06-02-2015, 09:05 PM
 
Location: 42°22'55.2"N 71°24'46.8"W
4,848 posts, read 11,748,741 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dm84 View Post
Correct. I'm a daily commuter to Cambridge via commuter rail. It is tolerable on a good day (and barely so). The people in my office who do not live in Cambridge or Somerville have little love for the commute. In fact I have co-workers living in Boston who spend almost as much time commuting each way as I do (which is insane).
Over 1 hour from Rozzie to Kendall, no joke!
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Old 06-02-2015, 09:15 PM
 
3,176 posts, read 3,665,577 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Parsec View Post
Over 1 hour from Rozzie to Kendall, no joke!
Exactly. I work near Harvard square and have co-workers in Roslindale who literally spend almost 90 minutes commuting door to door. Meanwhile I'm covering 25 miles in the same time. It doesn't make sense.
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Old 06-02-2015, 09:17 PM
 
3,268 posts, read 3,299,543 times
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How do you think the commute from woburn to Kendall would be?
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