You say this as if it's a good thing. Sometimes I wonder if you've actually ever been to any of the places you post about.
Also, what's with all the animosity towards Shirley Kressel? She's not the raving kook that some people here portray her as. I've had several conversations with her and found her to be a friendly and intelligent woman. I think one can disagree with her without resorting to personal insults and snide insinuations.
She used to post on this board. Considering all the cheap shots taken at her from some members here it's really no surprise that she doesn't anymore.
Briv Consider exhibit 1:
from Ms. Kressel " After Fidelity and Evergreen Solar cut jobs despite huge state "job creation" subsidies, "
this statement is lumping the proverbial paint with the orange juice and putting both in the refrigerator -- Fidelity is an institution in Boston much like the MFA or the BSO -- but unlike them it can and has expanded in Dallas TX and Cincinnati OH as well as RI and NH -- it could also pick-up and move (with some legal effort to restructure the original Massachusetts Business Trust) if the Commonwealth and Boston is too inhospitable a place to do business.
Evergreen Solar was a politically motivated state capitalism project -- ill thought out and ill planned -- without the deal with the state based on the Green Energy fund (derived from skimming off everyone's Electric Bill) -- no VC would have touched the company -- without the deal with the state for the factory at Devens -- no Investment Banker would have been involved -- the company was doomed from the beginning -- there was a total lack of due diligence on the part of the Commonwealth's Capitalists ostensibly working on our behalf --- if someone wanted to support the semiconductor manufacturing in Massachusetts -- it should have been to help Intel stay and expand in Hudson where the private sector had already invested over 1B$
As far as I can tell -- Ms. Kressel is quick to criticize -- slow to commend and I'm not sure that she's ever actually contributed something in her professed professions
On the other hand, like politics and history, this is a hobby for me -- I don't pretend to be an architect, landscape designer or city planner by formal training, apprenticeship or even having a degree conferred upon me. However, i lie walking around cities looking at buildings and city districts and trying to understand how various things came about and what might be done to improve things.
a partial list of cities over the past 30+ years which I've visited mostly on business related to technology:
North America:
Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto
Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Niagara falls, Schenectady, Uttica, Springfield,
San Francisco, San Jose, LA & valley, Santa Monica, San Diego, Lajolla, Ventur, Santa Barbara, Goletta, Anaheim, Riverside, Las Vegas, Cleveland, Louisville, Cincinnati,
Denver, Colorado springs, Phoenix, salt lake City, Provo, Santa Fe, Los Alamos, Albuquerque
El Paso, Austin, Fort Worth, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, McAllen, Corpus Christi
some places in baja and the rest of Mexico
Vickburg, Huntsville, Shreveport, New Orleans, Lafayette, St. Pete, Orlando, west Palm Beach, Miami
Atlanta, some places in W. Va, Newport and some places in Va, Charlotte, Winston Salem, Raleigh, Memphis, Nashville, Oak Ridge, Gattlingburg, DC, Baltimore and some place in MD., several places in NJ, NYC, Westchester, Yorktown Heights, several places in CT & RI
In Europe:
Paris, London, Oxford, York, Cambridge (the other one), Berlin, Munich, Frankfort, Darmstadt, Heidelberg, Potsdam, Brussels, Luxembourg, Madrid, Warsaw, Krakow, Zakopane ( on vacation), Gdansk, Katowice, Chorzow, Czestochowa, Oświęcim (Auschwitz),
In Asia:
Almaty (formerly Alma Atta Kazakhstan), Dubai, Jinan, Qingdao, Zibo, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei, Hsinchu, Taiwan. Singapore, Johor Malaysia, Seoul, Tokyo
There are others -- but this just a list from the top of my head spending about 10 minutes (mostly checking obscure spelling)
Note that this makes me any kind of expert -- just someone who has seen other places in various stages of development or lack there-of and with various types of historic backgrounds