| Boston: A Changing City
If you love Boston , as many people who commute by subway, or stroll on a lazy weekend do, it is a great place to live. But living here does pose challenges.
In this series, we're examining whether Boston is at a crossroads. Is the city going to grow and prosper? Can we learn from Boston's rich history of reinventing itself? Or are we headed, as some fear, into a slow decline?
When you drive into the city, or emerge from the "T", the city looks great. But Boston 's population is falling as residents flee the high cost of living. We've lost jobs and corporate boardrooms and, arguably, some of our prestige.
In our series, Boston at the Crossroads, we're asking the question: is Boston poised to lose its position as a major American city?
The Big Dig was supposed to help attract business to Boston by getting rid of the old elevated highway and by improving the flow of traffic. But as we watched central Boston change during more than a decade of Big Dig construction, something else changed Boston : the latest round of merger mania.
Boston lost most of its major corporate headquarters. BankBoston became Fleet, Fleet became North Carolina-based Bank of America. Gillette's corporate brain-trust relocated to Proctor & Gamble in Cincinnati . And while John Hancock still has a building in name here, the company was purchased by an insurance giant Manulife, from Canada .
In a recent study on Greater Boston's present and future, titled a "Regional Wake-Up Call", the Boston Foundation reported Massachusetts lost 200,000 jobs between 2001 and 2004. Boston lost 25 thousand jobs in just three years.
A History of Re-invention
It's worth taking time to look back at how Boston has been at a Crossroads many times over its 375 year history. Reinventing itself is nothing new for the city. It evolved from maritime economy, to manufacturing, textiles, leather and shoes, to hi-tech and the life and bio-sciences.
Drivers curse that the cow paths of Colonial Boston became the streets of urban Boston. When we needed more streets for more homes in the mid-1800's we filled in salt-water swamps to build the South End and the Back Bay.
And we evolved politically. Today's Boston arguably has its roots in the struggle for power in the first half of the 20 th century between the Irish, who rose to political prominence, and the Brahmins, who had the money.
Some look on this conflict as having a devastating effect on the city. And by the time World War II ended, many people regarded Boston as a dying city. And not only was Boston not an attractive place for businesses, just like today, residents were leaving, only in much larger numbers. In the decade starting in1950 the city's population fell by more than 100 thousand.
From those depths, in 1954, Boston Mayor John Hynes, credited with bringing the business and political communities together, provided a vision of a new Boston in a speech at Boston College , that he titled "Boston Whither Goest Thou", where he laid out an agenda for bringing the city back from the edge of irrelevance.
What followed was the Hynes-envisioned "Freedom Trail" and commercial development that changed the city's fortunes and its skyline: the Prudential Center, the Hancock Tower, and Government Center.
The Re-Emergence of Boston
Not long after, in the 1960's and 70's, Boston again found itself at the Crossroads in the racial unrest and emotionally draining turmoil of forced school busing.
What helped bring Boston back after busing was another project: Quincy Market. Pushed by then-Mayor Kevin White, Quincy Market became the model commercial urban re-development project in the country at the time - and still is, in terms of its ability to create energy, draw shoppers and tourists and economic vitality into the center of a city.
The timing helped. It was the Bicentennial, the Queen visited and Boston became a world tourist and corporate destination. There were new or redeveloped commercial buildings and retail space built downtown and in the Back Bay .
The turnaround was called the Massachusetts Miracle. Employment soared.
The Miracle was driven largely by the new computer and hi-tech industry, and the flourishing Boston-based financial services industry. In the 90's, that economic turnaround was followed by the dot-com boom, and again Boston was a national leader.
But with the prosperity came new problems. Clogged highways, sweaty elbow to elbow commutes on mass transit, overcrowded school classrooms, and the problem the experts call the number one problem slowing growth today: housing.
The average price of a home or condo in Boston is presently about $400,000. But, the median family income in Boston right now is $61,000, meaning the average family can afford a home priced at roughly $300,000.
At the beginning of May, of the 4,600 houses and condos for sale in Boston, only 20% were at $300,000 or under.
Challenges in the Future
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino has long labeled "inaccurate" Census Bureau counts showing losses in Boston 's population. Menino counters that employment is recently up, as are hotel and housing occupancy rates. The Mayor is clearly bullish on Boston .
But it's hard to deny that Boston can be a tough place to live.
Many of the experts think avoiding a major downturn, figuring out how Boston regenerates itself again naturally involves building on Boston 's strengths starting with our intellectual capital.
Housing the new workforce, educating it, creating new jobs, moving along stalled waterfront development and getting industrial, civic, cultural and political leaders to work together on these issues... are all challenges facing Boston at today's Crossroads.
Related Links:
The Boston Foundation: Greater Boston's community foundation, established in 1915.
The Boston Indicators Project: an on-going report from the Boston Foundation, breaking down the positive and negative trends affecting the greater Boston area.
The Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston: research on the most pressing issues facing the Boston area from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
MassINC: reports on a range of issues from workforce development to college affordability in Massachusetts.
Center for Urban and Regional Policy: research on demographics, housing and economic development from this Northeastern University think tank.
Boston History Innovation Collaborative: a report looking at factors contributing to Boston 's 400 years of innovation. |
