[CANCELED] 1000 Boylston Street | MassDOT Parcel 15 | Back Bay

[Rover]

Massachusetts population is projected to increase by half a million from the last census to the next one. That's the largest 10 year jump since the 1960's. Somebody is moving and staying here and they're not all from Guatemala or Brazil given the high housing prices. My town is chock full of professionals with young kids so much so that we desperately need to start building a new high school like yesterday!

The unfixable problem with Mass is that its a small state trying to handle a large influx of people. There's few ways of dealing with that, either build high (tosh's remedy) or improve transit to close by cities. Waiting for the leafy suburbs to fill in the gap is a fool's errant IMHO.

 

[stefal]

Massachusetts population is projected to increase by half a million from the last census to the next one. That's the largest 10 year jump since the 1960's. Somebody is moving and staying here and they're not all from Guatemala or Brazil given the high housing prices. My town is chock full of professionals with young kids so much so that we desperately need to start building a new high school like yesterday!

The unfixable problem with Mass is that its a small state trying to handle a large influx of people. There's few ways of dealing with that, either build high (tosh's remedy) or improve transit to close by cities. Waiting for the leafy suburbs to fill in the gap is a fool's errant IMHO.

We have one of the more unique organizations compared with other larger cities/urban areas, too [correct me if I'm wrong]. Our outer 495-belt-cities (Lowell, Lawrence, Haverhill, etc..) have, what we said a few weeks ago, 'great bones.' They have plenty of opportunity for growth and some great existing urban design. If we can (ethically) solve the issues related to drugs and blight/poverty, and implement regional rail, these cities should boom. This is the kind of sprawl I'm ok with, too. Not everybody can or wants to live in a big city, and not everyone wants to live in the suburbs, rural areas, etc.. With these smaller, outer cities, you could essentially cover all your typologies within a ~10 mile radius, decrease overall the cost of living (across Greater Boston and in Boston, these cities would likely see an increase in costs that is natural with growth), and perhaps retain/attract those college students that opt to leave Boston once they graduate.

 

[stick n move]

^ yup which all comes back to NSRL and electrification... It always does. A fast, efficient, commuter rail system, that is already very extensive and leads...everywhere, but just needs to connect both its halves is the ONLY thing that is going to bring it all together. And it would bring it together damn good because of how the state was laid out a long time ago. Blows my mind that its not the #1 priority in the entire state. The entire dynamics of the eastern half of MA change entirely the day it goes online. It may take a little to realize what just happened, but with 30/15 headways people would figure it out quick... as getting from anywhere Ma to anywhere else Ma becomes efficient af as the entire concept of traveling from point to point within the state shifts completely and people adjust to this new miracle traffic skipping time machine...

 

[whighlander]

Massachusetts population is projected to increase by half a million from the last census to the next one. That's the largest 10 year jump since the 1960's. Somebody is moving and staying here and they're not all from Guatemala or Brazil given the high housing prices. My town is chock full of professionals with young kids so much so that we desperately need to start building a new high school like yesterday!

The unfixable problem with Mass is that its a small state trying to handle a large influx of people. There's few ways of dealing with that, either build high (tosh's remedy) or improve transit to close by cities. Waiting for the leafy suburbs to fill in the gap is a fool's errant IMHO.

We'll see when the 2020 Census is completed -- as to how well the prediction matched the data*1.

Note that while people are definitely clustering more densely in Greater Boston*2 and a few other places whee the unemployment rate is very low -- the population in many places in MA is not increasing. Even Boston is still small in comparison to its WWII era peak*3

Also note that much of the new population in the Western Suburbs is due to successful people moving in from outside the country [typically India and China]*4 -- many of whom pay cash for $M+ houses. These new houses in turn are built upon the land immediately previously occupied by the houses built to handle the baby boom growth of the 60's and 70's. The difference is that the baby boom was powered by the WWII and Korean returning vets who had grown up in 3 deckers and wanted the suburban life style and worked in the suburbs [e.g. RT-128 America's Technology Highway"]. This new influx is driven by people hired to fill out senior positions in Cambridge and the Seaport and who want to send their kids to school in Lexington. Since there is no undeveloped land in Lexington -- the developers buy the houses from the 60's and 70's for $500,00 to $750,000 [depending on which grade school is nearby] and put up a house which sells in a handful of days for $1.M+.

*1 MA as a whole

Census Year Population relative change to prior decade

1910	3,366,416		20.0%
1920	3,852,356		14.4%
1930	4,249,614		10.3%
1940	4,316,721		1.6%
1950	4,690,514		8.7%
1960	5,148,578		9.8%
1970	5,689,170		10.5%
1980	5,737,037		0.8%
1990	6,016,425		4.9%
2000	6,349,097		5.5%
2010	6,547,629		3.1%
Est. 2018	6,902,149		5.4%

*3 Boston MSA [as proxy for the Greater Boston] and to some extent the Greater Greater Boston i.e. Boston CSA which has a population significantly larger than MA

Census Year Population relative change to prior decade

1910	2,260,762		19.6%
1920	2,563,123		13.4%
1930	2,866,567		11.8%
1940	2,926,650		2.1%
1950	3,186,970		8.9%
1960	3,516,435		10.3%
1970	3,918,092		11.4%
1980	3,938,585		0.5%
1990	4,133,895		5.0%
2000	4,391,344		6.2%
2010	4,552,402		3.7%
Est. 2014	4,732,161		3.9%

*3 Boston Census figures from the wiki over the past 100 years
Census Year Population relative change to prior decade

1910 670,585 +19.6%
1920 748,060 +11.6%
1930 781,188 +4.4%
1940 770,816 −1.3%
1950 801,444 +4.0%
1960 697,197 −13.0%
1970 641,071 −8.1%
1980 562,994 −12.2%
1990 574,283 +2.0%
2000 589,141 +2.6%
2010 617,594 +4.8%
2018 694,583 +12.5

so the current estimate is that Boston is back to where it was in 1910 on the way up or 1960 on the way down


*4 Lexington population and demographics from the wiki

]
In 2010, 20% of the residents of Lexington were born outside of the United States. As per a 2017 estimate, 55% the town's residents were born outside Massachusetts - 29% in other US states and territories and 26% outside the US.
Census Year Population relative change to prior decade

1910 4,918 +28.4%
1920 6,350 +29.1%
1930 9,467 +49.1%
1940 13,187 +39.3%
1950 17,335 +31.5%
1960 27,691 +59.7%
1970 31,886 +15.1%
1980 29,479 −7.5%
1990 28,974 −1.7%
2000 30,355 +4.8%
2010 31,394 +3.4%

 

[Rover]

whig I'm not sure what your point is, but mine remains the same. The state, particularly Eastern Mass is gaining people at a total amount not seen since the 1960's. That means we need more housing whether they're people like me who were born and bred here and now have kids or they just got in from Timbuktu. Whether the population of Monson or Wales is increasing or not is irrelevent. There's 500K more people here than 2000. We need to operate under the assumption that they'll keep coming at a similar rate or we'll end up screwing ourselves. Not directed at you personally, but the attitude that "oh everybody's moving out" is why transit and housing issues get neglected by politicians.

 

[Bos77]

Hyberbole, wiki copy pastes, echo chamber and love of ones own wordsmithing.

 

[Suffolk 83]

I think they know what they're doing in Boston.

http://weinerventures.com/real-estate-portfolio/

Well that didnt really prove much. They didnt actually build the Mandarin, or 234 Berkley, or Park Plaza and The Point and Continuum were built in concert with Samuels. I'm not going to pretend I'm an insider but although they may be local it doesnt appear they've built anything of consequence in Boston proper themselves. They do appear to have a good relationship with Samuels and that's about it

 

[bakgwailo]

Hyberbole, wiki copy pastes, echo chamber and love of ones own wordsmithing.

Yeah... it would be nice not to pollute the thread with all of that which is far off topic.

 

[Java King]

^ yup which all comes back to NSRL and electrification... It always does. A fast, efficient, commuter rail system, that is already very extensive and leads...everywhere, but just needs to connect both its halves is the ONLY thing that is going to bring it all together. And it would bring it together damn good because of how the state was laid out a long time ago. Blows my mind that its not the #1 priority in the entire state. The entire dynamics of the eastern half of MA change entirely the day it goes online. It may take a little to realize what just happened, but with 30/15 headways people would figure it out quick... as getting from anywhere Ma to anywhere else Ma becomes efficient af as the entire concept of traveling from point to point within the state shifts completely and people adjust to this new miracle traffic skipping time machine...

Perfectly said! I recently read that easy access to jobs via public transportation is the number one factor in lifting people out of poverty. (Seems like such a no-brainer to me) I agree that it should be the State's number one priority while maintaining our current transportation network.

 

[chrisbrat]

Minor point, but that "801,444" figure for Boston population from 1950 -- when I was a kid I saw that somewhere and was both oddly proud of how big the number was, but also pretty baffled at the population figures bookending it. Mentioned it to an urban planning dude at M.I.T. who my folks were friends with and he said that the census numbers both from the '40s and '50s also counted student/transient population and contemporary ones do not. So, while there was unquestionably a pretty significant exodus out of the city in from 1950-1980 it wasn't as severe as some of the "official numbers" make it seem.

 

[George_Apley]

@datadyne007 - there's probably a better home for this convo... maybe Housing a Changing City

 

[FitchburgLine]

@chrisbrat interesting, I believe the census/ACS counts include student population today but I may be wrong? Notably, Suffolk count never lost housing units on net- the entire loss was driven by drops in household size

 

[chrisbrat]

@chrisbrat interesting, I believe the census/ACS counts include student population today but I may be wrong? Notably, Suffolk count never lost housing units on net- the entire loss was driven by drops in household size

the only time i filled out a boston census they specifically indicated to *not* respond if i/we weren't year-round, permanent residents. that was a while ago though. and, yes, GA -- this is a derailment and i apologize for taking it further off topic (i just thought it was a brief, but interesting, aside since whig decided to drop all those population stats).

 

[jpdivola]

@chrisbrat interesting, I believe the census/ACS counts include student population today but I may be wrong? Notably, Suffolk count never lost housing units on net- the entire loss was driven by drops in household size

Yeah, Census numbers count college students in the city where they live when at college:

https://www.census.gov/population/ww...les.html#EIGHT

Census shows 105k people in Boston are college students:

American FactFinder - Results

American FactFinder is your source for population, housing, economic and geographic information.

factfinder.census.gov

 

[chrisbrat]

interesting. i stand (well, sit) corrected. though my roommate (ex roommate) just confirmed that way back when we got the census there was at least some field/box/whatever to check if we were students and not residents. maybe what we're remembering wasn't actually the government census, but some city thing.

 

[odurandina]

No way students are counted in the 700,000 pop.
Except for the resident's kids of course.
Grad students certainly should be counted.
i believe they are counted in Cambridge.
Not sure about Boston.

 

[stellarfun]

The Federal census counts where you are residing as of April 1 of the Census year. Guidancefor the 2010 Census

Boarding school students living away from their parental home while attending boarding school below the college level, including Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools - Counted at their parental home rather than at the boarding school.
College students living at their parental home while attending college - Counted at their parental home.
College students living away from their parental home while attending college in the U.S. (living either on-campus or off-campus) - Counted at the on-campus or off-campus residence where they live and sleep most of the time.
College students living away from their parental home while attending college in the U.S. (living either on-campus or off-campus) but staying at their parental home while on break or vacation - Counted at the on-campus or off-campus residence where they live and sleep most of the time.
U.S. college students living outside the U.S. while attending college outside the U.S. - Not counted in the census.
Foreign students living in the U.S. while attending college in the U.S. (living either on-campus or off-campus) - Counted at the on-campus or off-campus residence where they live and sleep most of the time.

Residence Rule And Residence Situations For The 2010 Census

 

[jpdivola]

Since the project is dead and the thread has derailed, I spent some time digging into the topic of how students are counted in pop figures a couple years ago...

In 2010, Boston had a population of 617,594 people, of those 39,517 lived in "non-institutional group quarters." (aka dorms)(See page 5) http://www.bostonplans.org/getattach...0-0805f98fef27

Independent of the Census, Boston requires colleges to report information on where students live via the University Accountability Act. Based on those figures, 36,000 students lived in dorms, 38,000 students lived off campus in Boston. The 36,000 dorm figure is very close to the Census "non-institutional group quarters" Page 13: http://www.bostonplans.org/getattach...a-a4b8411bf759

Based on Census 2011-15 ACS data, Boston had a population of 629,587 (over 3-years old). Of those, 109,000 (80,758 undergrads + 28,750 grad students) were enrolled in colleges.
(See page 10 http://www.bostonplans.org/getattach...b-35c8a954091c)

Here is another report that from the BRA on student housing, it show some details about where students live by type of housing and neighborhood: https://www.boston.gov/sites/defaul...sing_trends_ay_17-18_revised_final_180515.pdf

 

[whighlander]

interesting. i stand (well, sit) corrected. though my roommate (ex roommate) just confirmed that way back when we got the census there was at least some field/box/whatever to check if we were students and not residents. maybe what we're remembering wasn't actually the government census, but some city thing.

The Big Numbers came from the era of Big Families
Tripple Deckers in the era before and immediately after WWII often housed a single multi-generational family -- grand parents, parents, sometimes aunts and uncles or grown-up kids. The key was lots of kids -- bunk beds, etc. Typical family unit today has 2.1 people [not up to replacement size]. Back in the Greatest Generation and early Baby Boom the typical family size was over 4 with 6,7 or mode quite common. The old tripple deckers were packed to the gills with people. Outside of students and newly arrived immigrants with not much money -- no one lives in that kind of density.

 

[George_Apley]

interesting. i stand (well, sit) corrected. though my roommate (ex roommate) just confirmed that way back when we got the census there was at least some field/box/whatever to check if we were students and not residents. maybe what we're remembering wasn't actually the government census, but some city thing.

Probably a city thing. Many municipalities conduct their own census counts much more regularly than the federal census, for internal matters.