New Residents: Now that you've moved to Mass, do you have any regrets? (insurance, income)

[missionhill]

Holden, a terrific source on all this is Douglas Rae's City: Urbananism and its End. A case study of New Haven, he really clearly shows how conditions favored economic growth in cities like New Haven for a time, and how those conditions changed. In New Haven's case in spite of a tremendous effort on the part of local government leveraging federal resources to stem the decline, the economic and technological forces were too powerful to stop. You're right; global economic forces have been favoring metro regions like Boston and New York, disfavoring other big metro regions, and stripping smaller cities of all the wealth they once generated. I jumped on brightdog's comment because it gives credence to people's tendency to blame polititians and government in general for problems that are mostly way beyond the ability of local and state government to solve. State government had nothing to do with making Springfield and Holyoke the industrial powerhouses they were up until 1920 or so and there's not a lot it can do to bring that era back.

I think you're probably right about who supports whom in New York--people think the upstate economy is being drained to prop up the city, whereas more likely the metro area's economic engine--until very recently--was generating enough to support expensive metro-area priorities like the MTA and CUNY with enough left over to cushion the weaknesses upstate. Probably the same in Mass--I wonder if anyone's really studied it.

[holden125]

Originally Posted by missionhill

Holden, a terrific source on all this is Douglas Rae's City: Urbananism and its End. A case study of New Haven, he really clearly shows how conditions favored economic growth in cities like New Haven for a time, and how those conditions changed.

Thanks! I will definitely check it out. It's a topic of much interest and I used to live in New Haven and have a special affection for it. BTW, New Haven, despite its problems and excessively bad rep, has made great strides in the past 10-15 years and has to be one of the two or three best cities of its size in the US. A lot of its cultural offerings are due to presence of great institutions of higher learning like Albertus Magnus, SCSU, Quinnipiac, and that other one.

To some extent, thought, the conditions came because of policies favoring sprawl such as highway funding. European cities of similar size are often thriving, and have much more extensive mass transit networks, than those here. I wonder if some degree of central government planning can't alter circumstances significantly, but I don't think local and state government can do it alone. Their scale is just not big enough, and the big push in policy will come from what it subsidized, either directly or through tax incentives, and what is discouraged through additional taxation. That has to come from Washington.

[VlyRoadKid]

Originally Posted by Bimmer5

If you are that unhappy living in MA then there are 47 other states you can drive to! I am pretty well traveled and find MA to be the best when all things are considered. I just dont care for the cold, but you cant have it all... My point? Unless you are incarcerated you could always go back to your broke state and try for that acting gig again... Arnold sure could use the tax revenue... Or did Cali get sold to Mexico yet?

I don't know WHERE people get the idea that Mass is more broke than CA, which has one of the highest foreclosure rates and is now, I hear, BANKRUPT! Good thing you can live on the beach there and beg for food!

In W. Mass, with a few exceptions, the housing bubble never really burst. Home values have declined but we don't have tent cities of homeless families who just got kicked out after missing a couple mortgage payments. This is STILL considered a destination area...just check out the Massachusetts forums and see how many people are moving here!

[missionhill]

Some have argued that Massachusetts, in particular, has made a huge investment in Boston in the last 20 -25 years in the form of subway improvements (red line extensions, orange line extensions and relocation), the central artery/tunnel project, harbor cleanup, and water supply improvements, and those public investments have leveraged big private investment in the commercial and residential sector and created big demand to live and work in and around Boston proper. Would Boston have thrived as it has without those public investments? I don't know. Could you do something similar in the smaller cities around the state and get a comparable return on your investment? I'm not sure. I think a place like Boston is positioned to compete well in the current global system and the right public investments can ensure that success. A small industrial city like Springfield doesn't have a competitive advantage in the current system so putting public money into infrastructure might not leverage much private capital. The state has retooled the Springfield Armory and built the Civic Center but that hasn't had much of an effect. Hartford persists in being a basket case: Even as the state capitol and with all of Connecticut's wealth they can't seem to get the city itself up and running. The metro area as a whole is prosperous but the city is another story. These smaller cities really have a hard time.

[holden125]

Originally Posted by missionhill

Some have argued that Massachusetts, in particular, has made a huge investment in Boston in the last 20 -25 years in the form of subway improvements (red line extensions, orange line extensions and relocation), the central artery/tunnel project, harbor cleanup, and water supply improvements, and those public investments have leveraged big private investment in the commercial and residential sector and created big demand to live and work in and around Boston proper. Would Boston have thrived as it has without those public investments? I don't know. Could you do something similar in the smaller cities around the state and get a comparable return on your investment? I'm not sure. I think a place like Boston is positioned to compete well in the current global system and the right public investments can ensure that success. A small industrial city like Springfield doesn't have a competitive advantage in the current system so putting public money into infrastructure might not leverage much private capital. The state has retooled the Springfield Armory and built the Civic Center but that hasn't had much of an effect. Hartford persists in being a basket case: Even as the state capitol and with all of Connecticut's wealth they can't seem to get the city itself up and running. The metro area as a whole is prosperous but the city is another story. These smaller cities really have a hard time.

It's tough. Good jobs bring smart people and vice versa. You'd need an effort to leverage all the powers of policy to attract both more of less at the same time. The chicken and the egg together. I'd look at some sort of high-speed rail link direct to Boston and New York, and an array of subsidies to businesses willing to locate there and to people willing to move as well (say partial student loan forgiveness to lure the young and educated). A lot of these cities have great potential but have been kind of given up for dead in recent decades. This is not my area of expertise but it makes no sense to have overcrowded and unaffordable large cities while we have so many nearby smaller cities that need the boost.

[HeadedWest]

Originally Posted by VlyRoadKid

In W. Mass, with a few exceptions, the housing bubble never really burst. Home values have declined but we don't have tent cities of homeless families who just got kicked out after missing a couple mortgage payments. This is STILL considered a destination area...just check out the Massachusetts forums and see how many people are moving here!

I think the Mass. problem is the same one as in CT and other states: the public employee pension bomb. This is going to be trouble.

[mustmove]

Public transit is a sham. Run the numbers, you can could buy every rider several new cars for the cost of most PT projects. Plus PT uses money from folks that will never partake in the service. Less public transit bigger roads and more parking. Let Americans be Americans and stop shoving Euro poverty down our throats.

[lrfox]

Originally Posted by mustmove

Public transit is a sham. Run the numbers, you can could buy every rider several new cars for the cost of most PT projects. Plus PT uses money from folks that will never partake in the service. Less public transit bigger roads and more parking. Let Americans be Americans and stop shoving Euro poverty down our throats.

I respectfully disagree. It's not a sham. Not even in the slightest bit.

We simply cannot afford to sustain the lifestyle many Americans want both economically or environmentally. If you think it's as simple as comparing upfront costs, you're severely mistaken. People will "partake" in that service if it suits them, and that's the key. We need to build transit lines that suit the people. In fact, some places have such extensive and well used public transit that the service not only creates a better environment, but turns a profit... that's how it should be done and it CAN be done here with a little effort. No one is saying no one should have cars, but we shouldn't rely on them to the degree we do today.

There is no way that we can afford to burn fossil fuels at the rate we do and hope to sustain current lifestyles. The sub-prime mortgage crisis is a prime example of what happens when you, "let Americans be Americans" and millions of people try to live beyond their means by purchasing the piece of the pie that they simply can't afford. I'm willing to bet anyone who wanted to "live the dream" and now has no job and a foreclosed home would love to live in "Euro poverty."

[mustmove]

We can live the way we have. Progress lies in using more energy building more stuff etc. Not in riding bicycles to trains from our public housing projects. Prosperity comes from private property not trains not public goods.

[holden125]

Originally Posted by mustmove

We can live the way we have. Progress lies in using more energy building more stuff etc. Not in riding bicycles to trains from our public housing projects. Prosperity comes from private property not trains not public goods.

No, we cannot. Survival lies in using less energy. An awful lot of anti-prosperity has come from thirty years of uncritcal worship of private property.