General Boston Discussion

[AndrewOnTheMBTA]

I've always really liked Chicago. The music scene there is fantastic, and there seems to be a lot more high-rise residential. Also they seem to take better care of their road and transit infrastructure. I don't see as many rusty bridges and overpasses there, and they've been replacing portions of the old elevated railways with new ones.
"City of the Big shoulders" fits it well.

They have a nice stretch of smaller high-rise (20 to 30 stories) up the Lake Shore from downtown for about 7 miles, and they also plan out their dense neighborhoods every well. It feels like a city where people enjoy living in. The North Side feels like what Revere should've had more of with high rises and density near the beach, if it were planned a bit more. A path like Chicago's Lake Shore path up to Revere Beach from Eastie would be an awesome addition. Revere feels so disconnected from Boston sometimes when it feels like it should be like the North Shore of Boston's footprint.

I haven't checked out the music much still, but I will next time! The food is nothing to underestimate either.

I, expectedly, still get caught up in the architecture and transit there every time so far

 

[#bancars]

They have a nice stretch of smaller high-rise (20 to 30 stories) up the Lake Shore from downtown for about 7 miles, and they also plan out their dense neighborhoods every well. It feels like a city where people enjoy living in. The North Side feels like what Revere should've had more of with high rises and density near the beach, if it were planned a bit more. A path like Chicago's Lake Shore path up to Revere Beach from Eastie would be an awesome addition. Revere feels so disconnected from Boston sometimes when it feels like it should be like the North Shore of Boston's footprint.

I haven't checked out the music much still, but I will next time! The food is nothing to underestimate either.

I, expectedly, still get caught up in the architecture and transit there every time so far

I absolutely love Chicago, but one of the things I noticed when visiting is it just felt a lot...louder than Boston, and especially Camberville. Lots of wide roads downtown with cars flying down them at 40-50 mph, a seemingly higher number of modded or otherwise obnoxiously-loud cars, and the L, while very cool aesthetically, is so, so loud. Just a lot of noise pollution in general in a way that I don't feel most of the busiest parts of Boston have (aside from the areas right next to the highways of course).

 

[stick n move]

Culture shift: Boston considering opening some streets to open drinking​

“GBH uncorks the news that City Hall is considering several "open container districts" where people could buy something adult at a local restaurant and then just walk around sipping like we're a common New Orleans or Las Vegas.

Among the areas being considered: Kenmore Square, the Seaport, the North End, Downtown and, of course, Allston/Brighton, where maybe Tavern in the Square closed too soon.

Boston currently bans alcohol consumption in public, or at least away from licensed patios……”

https://www.universalhub.com/2024/whoa-boston-considering-opening-some-streets-open

 

[AndrewOnTheMBTA]

When I was in Chicago this past weekend, along the river walk they do this near many shops and gardens that line it, and the zone ends once you get far enough away from them (either between or at the ends of the River Walk). I imagine something like this. It's much more reasonable than feeling guilty for being on the wrong side of a rope with a cup and allows people to flow between businesses and expands seating areas, in like an outdoor food court type setting. I'd imagine something like this in North End zones, Seaport between patios/gardens, and such. Good idea!

 

[commuter guy]

I can't imagine this happening in the N. End. The city has effectively killed outdoor dining in that neighborhood due to supposed negative externalities, so I'd be very surprised that they would now spearhead some kind open container district.

 

[Delvin4519]

Boston v. Toronto is a bit of an unfair comparison, though. Toronto is the 4th biggest metro area in North America, Boston is 17th.

Is it just me that finds it extremely unhelpful that the US Census Bureau lumps Lowell, Lawrance, Framingham, and Brockton with Boston (and Fall River somehow gets merged with Providence... SMH)?

Yet the Census Bureau was also kind enough to split the entire Bay Area, Houston, Dallas, Charlotte, and Phoenix into dozens of pieces, while Boston was merged,

Lowell and Lawrence feel like they are a completely distanct urban core separate from Boston (look at the linked map below). They are barely even connected and require travelling through miles and miles of wooded areas between Medford (a suburb of Boston) and Lowell to get between Medford and Lowell. Fall River is cut off by 2 bodies of water away from Providence.

Absolutely wild that Boston somehow has 4.38 million in its "urban area" and could be considered "bigger than Detroit (3.77M)", or "comparable size to Melbourne (4.58M)". Is Boston really bigger than Detroit or a comparable size to Melbourne? Melbourne looks like it's significantly much larger and bigger than Boston, but officially, Boston's urban area is only 200k less than Melbourne. Detroit also appears like it's a lot bigger than Boston, not smaller.

Put Boston against Vancouver (2.46M) and they appear very similar in size. Boston looks like it may be slightly, marginally bigger than Baltimore (2.21M), but seems smaller than Denver (2.68M), and much more smaller than Minneapolis (2.91M).

When I did my fantasy frequent transit network calculation for how much of Boston could be covered with high frequency service, I had obtained a value of 1,459,620 for the parts of Boston that I had covered with fantasy frequent transit service (including some coverage gaps where portions of high density areas are inaccessible from the street grid/bus grid/rail grid). This value is only 33.3% of the 4,382,009 figure the Census Bureau reported for Boston's urban area. This seems quite awful, as if 66.7% of Greater Boston's "urban" area would be left unserved by such a fantasy MBTA network. This is despite Boston allegedly being one of the "most walkable cities" in the United States! Perhaps the 4.3 million figure is artificially inflating Boston in the population rankings? Or maybe Boston has one of the worst urban sprawls in the United States?

The US Census Bureau has Los Angeles, famous for it's highways, spawl, and traffic jams, with a population density of 2,886 people per sq kilometer; while Boston is only 1,021 people per square km, with Boston bigger than LA! Yikes. When I instead calculated my fantasy frequent transit network coverage against only Boston's streetcar suburbs, I instead obtained a percent coverage of 86.9% rather than 33.3%. This gives a ~1.68 million figure for what could be considered "Boston". However, the US Census Bureau only gives Boston either 675,647 (governing limits), 4,382,009 (urban limits), 4,941,632 (metro limits), or 8,466,186 (CSA), as population figures to report form.
In your opinion, how "big" would you consider Boston to be, compared to other US, Canadian, Australian, or English cities? Do other folks consider Boston to be comparably sized with Vancouver or Baltimore; or with Melbourne and Philly? (For example, Brisbane is reported to have 2.28M population, Toronto with 5.64M).

The bounds of the MBTA bus/RTA bus districts seems to be the most useful for demarcating the edge of Boston before Lowell/Brockton/Framingham/etc (BERy+Lynn/Quincy/etc. is also useful too). I often feel like Boston better belongs somewhere in the 2 million range in the list of cities (nearby to Brisbane/Vancouver/Manchester/Baltimore), and it's pretty absurd it's always somewhere in the 4 million range close by to Philly and Sydney and above Detroit (where Boston really should not be located). The CR only takes 13 minutes to get from North Station to West Medford to reach the end of the city (and if it were a regional rail/GLX hybrid making all local stops, 19 minutes to downtown). The Sydney Metro, on the other hand, takes 55 minutes to travel from the CBD just to get to the end of the line at the end of the city. (So yes, it's a bit silly for RMTransit to compare Boston with... Toronto... like how absurd it is, comparing a Boston railroad route with one from Sydney below)

 

[Highwayguy]

Or maybe Boston has one of the worst urban sprawls in the United States?

Nailed it

 

[kdmc]

Is it just me that finds it extremely unhelpful that the US Census Bureau lumps Lowell, Lawrance, Framingham, and Brockton with Boston (and Fall River somehow gets merged with Providence... SMH)?

Yet the Census Bureau was also kind enough to split the entire Bay Area, Houston, Dallas, Charlotte, and Phoenix into dozens of pieces, while Boston was merged,
View attachment 54843 View attachment 54845

Lowell and Lawrence feel like they are a completely distanct urban core separate from Boston (look at the linked map below). They are barely even connected and require travelling through miles and miles of wooded areas between Medford (a suburb of Boston) and Lowell to get between Medford and Lowell. Fall River is cut off by 2 bodies of water away from Providence.
View attachment 54848

Absolutely wild that Boston somehow has 4.38 million in its "urban area" and could be considered "bigger than Detroit (3.77M)", or "comparable size to Melbourne (4.58M)". Is Boston really bigger than Detroit or a comparable size to Melbourne? Melbourne looks like it's significantly much larger and bigger than Boston, but officially, Boston's urban area is only 200k less than Melbourne. Detroit also appears like it's a lot bigger than Boston, not smaller.
View attachment 54849 View attachment 54851

Put Boston against Vancouver (2.46M) and they appear very similar in size. Boston looks like it may be slightly, marginally bigger than Baltimore (2.21M), but seems smaller than Denver (2.68M), and much more smaller than Minneapolis (2.91M).
View attachment 54852 View attachment 54853

When I did my fantasy frequent transit network calculation for how much of Boston could be covered with high frequency service, I had obtained a value of 1,459,620 for the parts of Boston that I had covered with fantasy frequent transit service (including some coverage gaps where portions of high density areas are inaccessible from the street grid/bus grid/rail grid). This value is only 33.3% of the 4,382,009 figure the Census Bureau reported for Boston's urban area. This seems quite awful, as if 66.7% of Greater Boston's "urban" area would be left unserved by such a fantasy MBTA network. This is despite Boston allegedly being one of the "most walkable cities" in the United States! Perhaps the 4.3 million figure is artificially inflating Boston in the population rankings? Or maybe Boston has one of the worst urban sprawls in the United States?

The US Census Bureau has Los Angeles, famous for it's highways, spawl, and traffic jams, with a population density of 2,886 people per sq kilometer; while Boston is only 1,021 people per square km, with Boston bigger than LA! Yikes. When I instead calculated my fantasy frequent transit network coverage against only Boston's streetcar suburbs, I instead obtained a percent coverage of 86.9% rather than 33.3%. This gives a ~1.68 million figure for what could be considered "Boston". However, the US Census Bureau only gives Boston either 675,647 (governing limits), 4,382,009 (urban limits), 4,941,632 (metro limits), or 8,466,186 (CSA), as population figures to report form.
In your opinion, how "big" would you consider Boston to be, compared to other US, Canadian, Australian, or English cities? Do other folks consider Boston to be comparably sized with Vancouver or Baltimore; or with Melbourne and Philly? (For example, Brisbane is reported to have 2.28M population, Toronto with 5.64M).

The bounds of the MBTA bus/RTA bus districts seems to be the most useful for demarcating the edge of Boston before Lowell/Brockton/Framingham/etc (BERy+Lynn/Quincy/etc. is also useful too). I often feel like Boston better belongs somewhere in the 2 million range in the list of cities (nearby to Brisbane/Vancouver/Manchester/Baltimore), and it's pretty absurd it's always somewhere in the 4 million range close by to Philly and Sydney and above Detroit (where Boston really should not be located). The CR only takes 13 minutes to get from North Station to West Medford to reach the end of the city (and if it were a regional rail/GLX hybrid making all local stops, 19 minutes to downtown). The Sydney Metro, on the other hand, takes 55 minutes to travel from the CBD just to get to the end of the line at the end of the city. (So yes, it's a bit silly for RMTransit to compare Boston with... Toronto... like how absurd it is, comparing a Boston railroad route with one from Sydney below)

View attachment 54855

Your detailed post probably deserves a more detailed response than this, but I think the answer is simply: Boston's inner core of 1.6MM residents (orange), which roughly corresponds to the "sea of gray" you see on our satellite view, is significantly denser than the core of American metro areas like Detroit. Think 3+ times denser. When the primary urban form is multifamily triple deckers spaced 12 ft apart vs. setback SFHs with big yards, you end up with way more people in way less space.

All that core density means that you can have the periphery of the statistical Metro Area be made up of leafy, loaded suburbs but still end up in the top-20 for metro population. (Now, imagine if all the Miltons and Readings were built up like Somerville or even like Arlington-- hoo boy, I bet we'd be in the top 5).

 

[Delvin4519]

Your detailed post probably deserves a more detailed response than this, but I think the answer is simply: Boston's inner core of 1.6MM residents (orange), which roughly corresponds to the "sea of gray" you see on our satellite view, is significantly denser than the core of American metro areas like Detroit. Think 3+ times denser. When the primary urban form is multifamily triple deckers spaced 12 ft apart vs. setback SFHs with big yards, you end up with way more people in way less space.

The 1.6 mllion figure mentioned matches pretty closely with the 1.68 million figure I obtained for the area roughly corresponding with all of Boston's streetcar suburbs, where I included Salem, Beverly, and Peabody, but excluded the bulk of low density southern Newton/Brookline, and Saugus. Municipal and country boundries are often poor cutoffs for urban density, hence they aren't used for marking urban areas used by US/Canadian/Australian census officials (going by census blocks or satellite imagary to calculate urban areas).

When comparing Boston (4.38M) with other North American, Australian, and English cities, Boston occupied signficantly less land area than Las Vegas (2.19M) or Denver (2.68M). England has only 2 cities in the 2 million range (they haven't published 2021 census counts, so falling back to 2011 for last available data): Manchester (2.55M), and Birmingham (2.44M). Boston occupies much more land area compared to Manchester and Birmingham.

If Boston is denser than most American cities like Denver or Las Vegas; but also lags signficantly behind European cities such as Manchester or Birmingham; then it may well suggest a 2.xx million something figure better reflects Boston's urban and suburban population, rather than the absurd 4.38 or 4.9 million figure that the US Census Bureau uses to represent Boston. About 1.68 million live high density streetcar suburbs, with 1.46 million of those accessible "on the way" of a transit corridor from one major hub to another. Once including the Readings and the Miltions (and Saugus), there may well be hundrends of thousands or around a million that live in Boston's sprawling suburbs. Hundreds of thousands of Boston's suburban population, outside of the 1.46 million within its accessible streetcar suburbs, are simply too inaccessible to any kind of transit, aside from a Commuter Rail P&R or TOD station, as seen below:

:15 everywhere is definitely excessive for the density of the average past-128 stop. I can't imagine 8 TPH is going to catch flies at the Kingston sand pit or outside-downtown Newburyport parking lot, much less at the Hansons and Norfolks of the system. So many of the outer-zone stations are primarily parking-oriented, and there's nothing in the plan about deploying that "Marshall Plan's" worth of suburban buses to make the SUAW frequencies draw all-day from always-pulsing connections. The well really runs dry at that level

All that core density means that you can have the periphery of the statistical Metro Area be made up of leafy, loaded suburbs but still end up in the top-20 for metro population. (Now, imagine if all the Miltons and Readings were built up like Somerville or even like Arlington-- hoo boy, I bet we'd be in the top 5).

It's worth noting that Lowell, Lawrence, Framingham, and Brockton each contribute ~150k each to Boston's inflated urban populaton count. Haverhill, Marlbourough, Taunton, Newburyport, and Playmouth each also contribute about ~75k to Boston's inflated population count. Still other independent towns of half the size ~40k (such as Mansfield or Middleborough), also add to the inflated number. Alone, they stack up to just over a million people that live in completely separate, independent urban areas. Removing them and their associated suburbs, that drops Boston's 4.3 million figure down to just under 3 million.

Going with Boston's streetcar suburbs alone would put Boston around where Pittsburgh, Auckland, and Leeds-Bradford are (~#40 across US/Can/Aus/NZ/Engld), extending out to MBTA bus service area puts Boston around ~#25 with Vancouver, Birmingham, Denver, Baltimore, and Brisbane.

If Boston's outer ring 495 suburbs had the density of closer to even LA's region-wide urban density, that'd bump Boston's entire 495 ring to be up on par with Los Angeles. It's achievable with only LA's sprawling low density alone to 495, and doesn't even require the density of Boston's inner core streetcar suburbs.

Going with the density of Toronto's suburbs out to 128, Reading, and Beverly; would put Boston not that far behind Toronto's 5.64M population.

A test I've tried to use to decide whether a suburb or a satellite city is a part of a core city, is with a "rapid transit/light rail vs. regional rail" test. Is a given suburb or satellite city rapid transitable/LRT-able from the core city CBD? Or is regional rail a requirement, and metro/LRT impractical? Beverly, Salem, and Peabody are technically rapid transit-able all the way to Boston, if the Salem downtown tunnel wasn't such a huge barrier. Therefore, Beverly, Peabody, and Salem can be considered part of "Boston". Reading and Needham are LRT-able (or barely rapid transit-able) to downtown Boston just like the D branch (they also don't really have a strong "core" either). This also means Reading/Needham get lumped with Boston. Toronto, London, and Sydney are rapid transit-able all the way to the edge of their respective cities. However, getting from Toronto to Hamilton/Oshawa, London to Reading/Southend, or Sydney to Gosford/Wollongong, necessitates regional rail, not rapid transit. Similarly, Boston to Lowell or Framingham would make no sense as rapid transit, so this requires RER, and so Framingham and Lowell are "separate" from Boston.

 

[Stlin]

Is it just me that finds it extremely unhelpful that the US Census Bureau lumps Lowell, Lawrance, Framingham, and Brockton with Boston (and Fall River somehow gets merged with Providence... SMH)?

Yet the Census Bureau was also kind enough to split the entire Bay Area, Houston, Dallas, Charlotte, and Phoenix into dozens of pieces, while Boston was merged,
View attachment 54843 View attachment 54845

Lowell and Lawrence feel like they are a completely distanct urban core separate from Boston (look at the linked map below). They are barely even connected and require travelling through miles and miles of wooded areas between Medford (a suburb of Boston) and Lowell to get between Medford and Lowell. Fall River is cut off by 2 bodies of water away from Providence.
View attachment 54848

Absolutely wild that Boston somehow has 4.38 million in its "urban area" and could be considered "bigger than Detroit (3.77M)", or "comparable size to Melbourne (4.58M)". Is Boston really bigger than Detroit or a comparable size to Melbourne? Melbourne looks like it's significantly much larger and bigger than Boston, but officially, Boston's urban area is only 200k less than Melbourne. Detroit also appears like it's a lot bigger than Boston, not smaller.
View attachment 54849 View attachment 54851

Put Boston against Vancouver (2.46M) and they appear very similar in size. Boston looks like it may be slightly, marginally bigger than Baltimore (2.21M), but seems smaller than Denver (2.68M), and much more smaller than Minneapolis (2.91M).
View attachment 54852 View attachment 54853

When I did my fantasy frequent transit network calculation for how much of Boston could be covered with high frequency service, I had obtained a value of 1,459,620 for the parts of Boston that I had covered with fantasy frequent transit service (including some coverage gaps where portions of high density areas are inaccessible from the street grid/bus grid/rail grid). This value is only 33.3% of the 4,382,009 figure the Census Bureau reported for Boston's urban area. This seems quite awful, as if 66.7% of Greater Boston's "urban" area would be left unserved by such a fantasy MBTA network. This is despite Boston allegedly being one of the "most walkable cities" in the United States! Perhaps the 4.3 million figure is artificially inflating Boston in the population rankings? Or maybe Boston has one of the worst urban sprawls in the United States?

The US Census Bureau has Los Angeles, famous for it's highways, spawl, and traffic jams, with a population density of 2,886 people per sq kilometer; while Boston is only 1,021 people per square km, with Boston bigger than LA! Yikes. When I instead calculated my fantasy frequent transit network coverage against only Boston's streetcar suburbs, I instead obtained a percent coverage of 86.9% rather than 33.3%. This gives a ~1.68 million figure for what could be considered "Boston". However, the US Census Bureau only gives Boston either 675,647 (governing limits), 4,382,009 (urban limits), 4,941,632 (metro limits), or 8,466,186 (CSA), as population figures to report form.
In your opinion, how "big" would you consider Boston to be, compared to other US, Canadian, Australian, or English cities? Do other folks consider Boston to be comparably sized with Vancouver or Baltimore; or with Melbourne and Philly? (For example, Brisbane is reported to have 2.28M population, Toronto with 5.64M).

The bounds of the MBTA bus/RTA bus districts seems to be the most useful for demarcating the edge of Boston before Lowell/Brockton/Framingham/etc (BERy+Lynn/Quincy/etc. is also useful too). I often feel like Boston better belongs somewhere in the 2 million range in the list of cities (nearby to Brisbane/Vancouver/Manchester/Baltimore), and it's pretty absurd it's always somewhere in the 4 million range close by to Philly and Sydney and above Detroit (where Boston really should not be located). The CR only takes 13 minutes to get from North Station to West Medford to reach the end of the city (and if it were a regional rail/GLX hybrid making all local stops, 19 minutes to downtown). The Sydney Metro, on the other hand, takes 55 minutes to travel from the CBD just to get to the end of the line at the end of the city. (So yes, it's a bit silly for RMTransit to compare Boston with... Toronto... like how absurd it is, comparing a Boston railroad route with one from Sydney below)

View attachment 54855

I'm not qualified to offer commentary on your analysis, but I'd like to note that "urbanized area" as per above ≠ metropolitan statistical area or CBSA. 4.3M is the population of the Boston Metro district plus that of the Cambridge-Newton-framingham SA. Unfortunately, statistical areas use county based delineations per OMB guidelines, and thus actually encompasses areas outside of the urban area. You might do better with the Metropolitan Divisions, which are somewhat smaller, but Cambridge-Newton-Framingham still includes all of Essex and Middlesex counties. As MA counties don't meaningfully exist, it's functionally wholly arbitrary what constitutes greater Boston to the Census Bureau - it'll ultimately depend on the context which map/data product you're looking at.

 

[Delvin4519]

I'm not qualified to offer commentary on your analysis, but I'd like to note that "urbanized area" as per above ≠ metropolitan statistical area or CBSA. 4.9M is the population of the Boston-Cambridge-Newton CBSA, which unfortunately use county based delineations per OMB guidelines, and thus actually encompasses areas outside of the urban area. You might do better with the Metropolitan Divisions, which are somewhat smaller, but Cambridge-Newton-Framingham still includes all of Essex and Middlesex counties. As MA counties don't meaningfully exist, it's functionally wholly arbitrary what constitutes greater Boston to the Census Bureau - it'll depend on the context which map you're looking at.

View attachment 54891

Yea, MSAs and CSAs are significantly less helpful than just "urbanized areas". I opted to fetch populations for here from the United States, which pulls areas from this map here used by the Census Bureau. This is where the 4.38 million figure comes from, and is only marginally better than the 4.9 million figure that comes from the MSA, but still plain awful and quite misleading. From Canada, they use this source for urban areas. The UK hasn't reported 2021 figures for England yet, so their data is all from 2011. Australia has updated data for 2021, but not accessible on the wiki, so I manually went through to find the numbers from the source directly. New Zealand has data here, though Wellington was recently split and was previously merged prior to 2018. Going with whatever standard for urban areas and double checking that the shapefiles correspond to generally only built up areas, gives this merged list of cities (I did not edit any of this list, though its purposes are mostly for my fascination, use another source for a worldwide list).

Cities in blue have metros or subways. Cities in green only have light rail. Cities in yellow only have a monorail system or related. Cities in either shade of orange only have commuter rail systems. Cities in red have no urban rail at all and only a BRT line or so. (Brisbane is the largest city on this list without any kind of subway or light rail system..... yikes.. and they'll soon have the olympics in 2032. San Antonio has no rapid transit, light rail, or even commuter rail at all, the largest city on this list with no urban rail transit)

This is why Sydney is listed as having 4.69M population, not 5.23M. Toronto only actually has a population of 5.64M, not 6.20M. The discrepency of 600k or so for Boston and the aformentioned examples is since they include some completely separate urban cores and rural areas that are too far removed and disconnected from the core city. Boston here is shown as 4.38M, not 4.9M.

The aformentioned examples use these official boundries used by each national census bureau to mark the edge of the city, not "MSAs". Does Toronto really extend all the way to Lake Simole? Does Sydney really extend almost to Gosford's footsteps? Boston in no way extends to Portsmouth 82km out or Mattapoisett 80km out in Boston's "MSA".

The borders of MSAs are very unhelpful in including rural areas. MSAs use some form of "county border", and counties are almost completely meaningless in Massachusetts. No wonder why the US Census Bureau is so aggressive in merging literally every single satellite city with Boston and Providence. I often feel like it would make far more sense for Massachusetts to simply redraw the counties to match the RTA districts. That'd give a lot more helpful statistics for areas across Massachusetts. Notice the regions on this map below is a lot more representative of the state. Boston in this map here only extends as far as Reading or Beverly.

The "urban areas" definition is the only one that forgoes county boundries reported by each national census bureau in favor of evaulating each built up area directly, hence the map on the right is the most precise option the census bureau provides, but for Boston and Providence, it's still woefully insufficent and quite awful, but it's as close the offical population figures can get. 4.38 million (urban areas standard) is marginally closer to the 2.xx million range that Boston would better be reflected as, versus 4.9 million from the MSA standard.

That's why I pose the question "how big (or small) do you think Boston is, relative to other cities?". Other people may have travelled more than I have, and may have feelings on whether other cities like Sydney, Vancouver, or Detroit feel "bigger than Boston", or "smaller than Boston". The table is for supplemental reference.

 

[type001]

I can’t help but think of the show “Shameless” nowadays when someone mentions Chicago.

 

[#bancars]

Nailed it

It's really so bad. So many towns and suburbs that really aren't all that far from the geographic center of Boston (e.g. Weston, Sudbury, Wellesley, Concord, Needham) generally consist of enormous lot sizes and sprawling haphazard old road networks. For all their faults, many newer suburban development patterns across the Sunbelt are far, far denser, which helps maintain some semblance of affordability...

 

[Charlie_mta]

It's really so bad.

It is and it isn't. With Boston, you can go 15 miles out and be in what appears to be the "country", but in many sun belt cities you go 15 miles out and its still wall-to-wall development. The Boston areas network of large park reservations like Middlesex Fells, Blue Hills and several others, plus the patchwork development in the old towns, breaks up the density, which spreads the metro area further out but at least makes it more livable in many ways.

 

[ratrare1969]

More drunks on the street, Hooray

Culture shift: Boston considering opening some streets to open drinking​

“GBH uncorks the news that City Hall is considering several "open container districts" where people could buy something adult at a local restaurant and then just walk around sipping like we're a common New Orleans or Las Vegas.

Among the areas being considered: Kenmore Square, the Seaport, the North End, Downtown and, of course, Allston/Brighton, where maybe Tavern in the Square closed too soon.

Boston currently bans alcohol consumption in public, or at least away from licensed patios……”

https://www.universalhub.com/2024/whoa-boston-considering-opening-some-streets-open

 

[as02143]

The Boston areas network of large park reservations like Middlesex Fells, Blue Hills and several others, plus the patchwork development in the old towns, breaks up the density, which spreads the metro area further out but at least makes it more livable in many ways.

It's wild to me to have a park-reservation and have stately estates as if we were still living in colonial England. Any place within 128 shouldn't really have many of these estate-like properties bordering some of the most numerous green and open spaces in the region - it should be so much more accessible to us poors.

 

[kdmc]

It's wild to me to have a park-reservation and have stately estates as if we were still living in colonial England. Any place within 128 shouldn't really have many of these estate-like properties bordering some of the most numerous green and open spaces in the region - it should be so much more accessible to us poors.

Agreed in theory but, so what? We seize the property from the owners?

 

[as02143]

Agreed in theory but, so what? We seize the property from the owners?

First step is to get rid of zoning for only single family housing, second step is to neuter any historical controls to only suggest following design review advise, and third is to fund as many affordable housing projects in close proximity.

The rest will sort it self out over a couple of development cycles.

 

[Charlie_mta]

First step is to get rid of zoning for only single family housing, second step is to neuter any historical controls to only suggest following design review advise, and third is to fund as many affordable housing projects in close proximity.

The rest will sort it self out over a couple of development cycles.

That sounds good, but politically has zero chance of happening in the wealthier towns inside (and outside) Rte. 128.

 

[TallIsGood]

It's really so bad. So many towns and suburbs that really aren't all that far from the geographic center of Boston (e.g. Weston, Sudbury, Wellesley, Concord, Needham) generally consist of enormous lot sizes and sprawling haphazard old road networks. For all their faults, many newer suburban development patterns across the Sunbelt are far, far denser, which helps maintain some semblance of affordability...

Wellesley has a density of almost 3k/sq mi and Needham 2.6k sq mi. Denser than most would guess.