MassDOT Pike Parcels 12 - 15 | Boylston St. and Mass. Ave | Back Bay

odurandina said:
There are 90 skyscrapers planned, under-construction or built in Miami.

We're twice the size of Miami and we're doing like 10 significant highrises.
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You ever wonder why Miami continues to build so much yet the population of the city hasn't grown much at all? Because the buyers of all those condos are foreign investors that doesn't live in the city. None of those that actually needs housing benefited from the boom.
 
odurandina said:
There are 90 skyscrapers planned, under-construction or built in Miami.

We're twice the size of Miami and we're doing like 10 significant highrises.
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Boston is not twice the size of Miami.

Besides, Miami is not a city I would want Boston to ever emulate, same goes for cities like Atlanta, Houston, Dallas and Charlotte.

Foreign investors, especially those from South America, have second and third homes in Miami. That's what is pushing so much development.
 
Boston is about 1.5 times the size of Miami, and the same thing that happens in Miami is going to happen to many of the units in luxury high rises in Boston.
 
The Miami metro population in 2015 was 6,012,331 and the Boston metro population in 2015 was 4,774,321; therefore, Miami is actually slightly larger than Boston as far as the metro area is concerned. Conversely the Boston CSA has a population of 8,152,573 and the Miami CSA has a population of 6,654,565. Based on this I would say Boston could be considered to have a larger sphere of influence but is not significantly larger than Miami and is in fact smaller based on the metro area populations.
 
What was the counter argument at the meeting? What do they propose is done with these gaping holes in the middle of one of the most important areas of the city? Its easy to say no its harder to say why.
 
citylover94 said:
The Miami metro population in 2015 was 6,012,331 and the Boston metro population in 2015 was 4,774,321; therefore, Miami is actually slightly larger than Boston as far as the metro area is concerned. Conversely the Boston CSA has a population of 8,152,573 and the Miami CSA has a population of 6,654,565. Based on this I would say Boston could be considered to have a larger sphere of influence but is not significantly larger than Miami and is in fact smaller based on the metro area populations.
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I don't think the population of a cities metro area is a good indication of how big a city is. The 2015 population estimate for Miami is 441,000 while the estimate for Boston is 667,000. Boston isn't going to build skyscrapers because a bunch of people want to live in Lowell, Waltham, Braintree etc. but it might be inclined to build tall if a bunch of people want to live within the city itself.
 
Metro Miami includes all of South Florida. Much of which is retirees in Boca Raton. There are numerous other "cities" that have nothing to do within the metro area. It's a loose and crappy definition of an MSA.
 
odurandina said:
We have crossed 680,000.
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Now we just have to annex Chelsea, Everett, Brookline, Winthrop, Newton. Lynn may actually benefit if we did although its not connected it "feels" more like Boston than West Roxbury does.
 
Jrubbs said:
I don't think the population of a cities metro area is a good indication of how big a city is. The 2015 population estimate for Miami is 441,000 while the estimate for Boston is 667,000. Boston isn't going to build skyscrapers because a bunch of people want to live in Lowell, Waltham, Braintree etc. but it might be inclined to build tall if a bunch of people want to live within the city itself.
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This. Miami's condo towers are built in Miami city proper, not the metro. It has nothing to do with the population at the CSA level. But again, despite building an enormous amount of skyscrapers, Miami hasn't grown, meaning people are not buying condos to live, but as an investment which is unfortunate because this keeps housing prices artificially high, outpricing those that do want to live in the city and pushing them into the suburb. This is a classic example of why just building a glut of luxury condos will not decrease housing prices enough so that housing becomes affordable to those who wants to live there, and this is why pushing Boston to build numerous 700 ft towers is bad city planning.
 
Just because the people who own many of the units in Miami's luxury towers aren't full time residents doesn't mean the towers just sit empty all year. Also the population of Miami increased by just over 40,000 between 2010 and 2015. I would consider that pretty good population growth for an area that is only 36 square miles.
 
odurandina said:
There are 90 skyscrapers planned, under-construction or built in Miami.

We're twice the size of Miami and we're doing like 10 significant highrises.
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You can't compare Boston with Miami on that one. Almost every Euro with as little as a few hundred grand to spare wants to have a condo or home there. Yes, it's a huge economic and cultural center but nobody is going to fly into Boston to party five or six weekends a year.
 
kmp1284 said:
You can't compare Boston with Miami on that one. Almost every Euro with as little as a few hundred grand to spare wants to have a condo or home there. Yes, it's a huge economic and cultural center but nobody is going to fly into Boston to party five or six weekends a year.
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I do think we can make more apt comparisons to other cities that are outbuilding us, some substantially, such as Montreal (apparently the French thing isn't hindering them), Toronto (the nonstop insane level of construction for 15+ straight years honestly baffles me), Seattle, and Philadelphia.

It's like a huge constituent of Bostonians refuses to believe that we are anything more than a small town, let alone Boston's Alpha- ranking as a global power. On that level we are talking between the 24th-45th most important cities IN THE WORLD. Only 3 US cities are above the Alpha-. (NYC, LA, and Chicago) At the same level as Boston are San Francisco, Washington, Miami, and Atlanta. Like it or not, Boston is a big city with an aversion to big city buildings.
 
i would fully agree, except that i believe we rank well higher on Global economic power than 24th. Maybe closer to 15~18th or so, depending on what part of the CSA you're looking at.
 
DZH22 said:
I do think we can make more apt comparisons to other cities that are outbuilding us, some substantially, such as Montreal (apparently the French thing isn't hindering them), Toronto (the nonstop insane level of construction for 15+ straight years honestly baffles me), Seattle, and Philadelphia.

It's like a huge constituent of Bostonians refuses to believe that we are anything more than a small town, let alone Boston's Alpha- ranking as a global power. On that level we are talking between the 24th-45th most important cities IN THE WORLD. Only 3 US cities are above the Alpha-. (NYC, LA, and Chicago) At the same level as Boston are San Francisco, Washington, Miami, and Atlanta. Like it or not, Boston is a big city with an aversion to big city buildings.
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Paris is even more important than we are and also has the same aversion. Please stop pretending tall means something.

I'd much rather we focus on awesome regional connectivity and reboot Worcester and Lowell into real spoke cities for Boston. Not every business needs to end up here and it would be massively beneficial for the rest of the state to distribute the economy more evenly.
 
I agree just like Boston is coming up with a master plan 2030. I would love to see the state come up with a similar plan. Hence as Boston goes the greater boston area goes.
 
DZH22 said:
I do think we can make more apt comparisons to other cities that are outbuilding us, some substantially, such as Montreal (apparently the French thing isn't hindering them), Toronto (the nonstop insane level of construction for 15+ straight years honestly baffles me), Seattle, and Philadelphia.
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Montreal has one tower above 600 ft built recently and none of the proposals/u/c are higher than that. In fact, you can say Boston has larger projects than Montreal, a city about three times the size of Boston. Oh and btw, Montreal has a more severe height limit than Boston.

I don't know why Toronto will baffle you considering Toronto is basically the NYC of Canada and is larger than Chicago (and with a smaller skyline than Chicago). Philadelphia is significantly larger than Boston and Seattle is experiencing a boom due to a population boom and Amazon moving its headquarter into the city.
 
meddlepal said:
Paris is even more important than we are and also has the same aversion. Please stop pretending tall means something.
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Paris has been steadily adding large 500-600'+ towers to La Defense, just added another large 500'+ tower outside of that district, and has plans for twin supertalls (plus at least one other supertall) last I heard. European cities have stepped up their games a lot over the last few years regarding height, and most of them are far more historic than Boston.

Of course height means something. The tallest structures are the most visible in a city. If the Hancock and Pru were each a pair of 375'-400' towers, instead of the single large towers they are today, the current "Postcard View" of the Back Bay wouldn't be on any postcards.

I love sports analogies. Imagine 2 Patriots seasons back to back. In one they win the superbowl (tall tower here) and in the other they lose in the divisional round (short tower here). Now compare that to losing the AFC Championship game twice in a row. (pair of 400' towers)

Look at the difference between the red circle below vs the green circle below. That is the impact of 400-450' towers in Boston, vs 600'. That is a very serious visual dichotomy. Advocating to chop the heights is completely ignoring the overall aesthetics of the city in its entirety. It takes a certain level of height to stand out. Peaks and valleys will always be more visually pleasing than making the whole city into a fat, underwhelming wall.

Maybe people just don't care because I'm talking to a bunch of blind people on their braille computers.

30711072860_6da50d542d_k by David Z, on Flickr
 
KentXie said:
Montreal has one tower above 600 ft built recently and none of the proposals/u/c are higher than that. In fact, you can say Boston has larger projects than Montreal, a city about three times the size of Boston. Oh and btw, Montreal has a more severe height limit than Boston.
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Eventually Boston will blow past Montreal due to the height that many posters take for granted. In the meantime over the last few years Montreal has essentially built the equivalent of this project, plus the Trinity Hotel, plus the Bubble Hancock, plus the Avalon NS, Longfellow Tower, and both TD Garden Towers, plus the Pierce, plus the Congress Street residential... They are going bananas between 380'-600'. Montreal has also gone toe to toe with Boston on everything smaller than that range. For whatever reason, the projects here have lagged behind in their timing.

Boston is not churning out the quantity to keep up with Montreal, but Montreal ultimately won't be able to compete with 1 Dalton, Winthrop Square, and SST, not to mention MT.
 
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