General Boston Discussion

FK4 said:
General Boston problem: the problem is the number and tiny size of surrounding municipalities. Everything is Balkanized… We had a brief glimmer of romantic unification with the coincidence of the city beautiful movement and metropolitan area based authorities… sadly, at a time when this is needed the most, we are living in an era of atomization.
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w/ unnerving implications.
 
Lrfox said:
One teensy observation from today: There's a plaque on the ground on Tremont in front of the Omni Parker House advising pedestrians to "look up and see the Old North Church in front of you." Thing is... the new Gov't Center head house pretty much blocks the view. You can sort of see the church steeple still if you look through the glass and around some of the support structure, but the effect of the view is certainly not what was intended (or what it used to be). Seems like something an observant NIMBY might have picked a fight with when the head house was proposed.
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The justification from the MBTA/BRA is that, since the headhouse is glass, you can still see the steeple, as you say.
 
What are the implications? There's some part of me that thinks it must be true. Compared to other comparable metros (I'm thinking of Philly, DC, the Bay, we have more municipalities. It stands to reason that a Boston which incorporated some of the smaller satellites would be more efficient, but is there actually any evidence that this is a worse-run region than others? We're doing just about as well as our competitor metros aren't we? I think the local governments, with few exceptions, are fairly cooperative because it'd be absurd to treat our city borders as very meaningful.

The most glaring example is regional housing planning, but what else? Does the T run into any issues arising from this?
 
The T can be improved. That's very good. The "implications" i was referring to are mostly centered around the 800 lb elephant; housing..... Glaring once you begin to list the communities unwilling to build large housing projects w/ low parking space ratios at their transit stations.

i'd be satisfied if we could grow reasonably outside of Boston/ Cambridge/ Somerville/ and to some extent Malden/ Everett's housing authorities which are building.... The first three can't be expected to build 96% of all the housing in Eastern Massachusetts.

There should be major improvements to the T going on, and some number like 50,000 + 50,000 units planned for both sides of 128. For the T, the right of way's are considerable enough to plan and add probably 125~200,000 housing units.

I've believed for some time we have plenty of room for Amazon. Except the State is being crushed by a combination of cronyism, nimbyism, & 1 party rule.
 
I mostly agree but we have a Republican governor and a Democratic legislature. How exactly is that one party rule? However, you cannot blame the left for the right's inability to connect with voters. If you refuse to give the people what they need then you cannot expect them to vote for you.
 
Re: What's Happening With Project X?

The Globe lunatics really slay me. There ain't no real estate crash coming to Boston EVER. :) If it crashed it would only be after an end-of-it-all type of financial meltdown worldwide: then they'd all come here anyway. We added like 95,000,000 people to the US in the last 30 years, and only 3 jurisdictions in the state are building any housing in any kind of significant numbers whatsoever.

Only a tiny fraction of those 95,000,000 have come to Boston. And while we keep adding jobs, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Miami, DC metro and half the other suburban sprawl shytteholes continue building 3, 4, 5X times the number of units as Boston. Hundreds of thousands of people desire to locate here. There ain't gonna be enough real estate added to the Boston metro in 10 of our lifetimes to quench the planet's thirst. Geebus; the welfare/ ENDLESS FREE SHYTTE/ utopian ideology and JOBS are wayy too juicy for people to pass up what the fuck. :)
 
Re: What's Happening With Project X?

^ yup and thats why I say that this development will not lower housing costs but raise them. Were making the city much nicer with each new development especially in bulfinch, that attracts more people. The more we build, the bigger and better the city is, the higher the rents, the more people move here. People want to be here, but making the city 5x nicer than it was will by no means lower rent. Manhattan alone has what 9 million people? And more want to move in still, theres practically an unlimited amount that can and will move here and the better and better it gets the higher the rent. Building dot block near my apartment makes the area 10x better and rent will reflect. Were not building our way to lower rents lets just throw that argument completely out once and for all. Same with expanding transit. It will make the city better and raise the cost of all the housing close by where its built. I love watching Boston grow, but its neverrrr going to lower rent, more like the exact opposite. How could we think that fixing the problems all over the city, cleaning it up, making it more efficient, would ever lower rent lol. The point of fixing something is to make it better. Were not just “adding housing” were drastically improving the whole city overall and that has a compounding effect.
 
Re: What's Happening With Project X?

stick n move said:
^ yup and thats why I say that this development will not lower housing costs but raise them. Were making the city much nicer with each new development especially in bulfinch, that attracts more people. The more we build, the bigger and better the city is, the higher the rents, the more people move here. People want to be here, but making the city 5x nicer than it was will by no means lower rent. Manhattan alone has what 9 million people? And more want to move in still, theres practically an unlimited amount that can and will move here and the better and better it gets the higher the rent. Building dot block near my apartment makes the area 10x better and rent will reflect. Were not building our way to lower rents lets just throw that argument completely out once and for all. Same with expanding transit. It will make the city better and raise the cost of all the housing close by where its built. I love watching Boston grow, but its neverrrr going to lower rent, more like the exact opposite. How could we think that fixing the problems all over the city, cleaning it up, making it more efficient, would ever lower rent lol. The point of fixing something is to make it better. Were not just “adding housing” were drastically improving the whole city overall and that has a compounding effect.
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Manhattan's population is 1.6 Million. All of NYC is 8.5 million.
 
Re: What's Happening With Project X?

Greater Boston rents continue to rise, and at a faster clip...


By Katheleen Conti GLOBE STAFF JUNE 29, 2018

Just in time for the mad rush to secure Sept. 1 apartments, some bad news for renters: Average Boston-area rents over the spring months increased at the quickest pace in three years.

The average rent in Greater Boston for the second quarter of the year hit $2,187, up more than 4 percent compared with the same period last year, according to data from the real estate firm Reis Inc. Last year at this time, rents grew by just 2 percent year over year.
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https://www.bostonglobe.com/busines...faster-clip/xaFNvOa8XrZXTb8rPBFHUL/story.html
 
From that article:

But rents are not rising across the board. The escalation has seemingly stopped — or at least slowed — for some older units that have not had kitchen or bathroom renovations, and particularly for apartments that are not near MBTA stations, Nabatoff said. Those units are not renting as fast or for as much money as they once did. For instance, a newly vacant unit in West Cambridge that recently commanded $2,400 monthly rent is now available for $2,250.

“I’ve shown it like 20 times,” she said. “Some places and locations are getting harder to rent that are not right on the Red Line.”
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Plenty of room to build around many Red Line stations.
 
Re: What's Happening With Project X?

stick n move said:
^ yup and thats why I say that this development will not lower housing costs but raise them. Were making the city much nicer with each new development especially in bulfinch, that attracts more people. The more we build, the bigger and better the city is, the higher the rents, the more people move here. People want to be here, but making the city 5x nicer than it was will by no means lower rent. Manhattan alone has what 9 million people? And more want to move in still, theres practically an unlimited amount that can and will move here and the better and better it gets the higher the rent. Building dot block near my apartment makes the area 10x better and rent will reflect. Were not building our way to lower rents lets just throw that argument completely out once and for all. Same with expanding transit. It will make the city better and raise the cost of all the housing close by where its built. I love watching Boston grow, but its neverrrr going to lower rent, more like the exact opposite. How could we think that fixing the problems all over the city, cleaning it up, making it more efficient, would ever lower rent lol. The point of fixing something is to make it better. Were not just “adding housing” were drastically improving the whole city overall and that has a compounding effect.
Click to expand...

I buy the argument that new construction in Boston is so expensive and limited that it won't make noticeable dent in the upward trajectory in rents. But to argue new construction will actually raise rents on the existing supply is taking it too far IMO. For that to be true if Boston builds 1000 units, that will induce more than 1000 people to move here? That doesn't seem likely. I can see some demand inducement, but it's likely to be less than 1:1.
 
odurandina said:
here's a potential disaster..... sheet-metal-workers-strike

https://www.bostonglobe.com/busines...kers-strike/Rgni4bGYcck3Kvl7BVDuLN/story.html
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".....About 1,400 sheet metal workers went on strike Wednesday after their union rejected a proposal that would have provided a wage and benefits package totaling nearly $97 an hour......"

For those of you keeping score at home, that means these guys rejected $201,760 per year in salary and benefits.

When/if the robots replace them, I won't shed a tear.
 
Wanna test your knowlege.... Does anyone know the average value of new office, residential construction per sq ft in Downtown, Seaport, Back Bay etc....

Better yet, does anyone know the average cost/sq ft to build the value?
 
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Does anybody know what construction costs are going per square foot in the city?
 
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