Anyone who has been to the “City of Champions” recently has seen an incredible re-imagining of our downtown focused on long-term sustainability and economic growth.
Gateway Cities
Posted inBook Review
Questioning competitiveness
Through 200 years of manufacturing in the South Coast communities of Fall River and New Bedford, Shaun Nichols outlines cycles of growth and decline in multiple industries, raising compelling and uncomfortable questions about regional economic development.
Posted inEconomy
Lawmakers from Lowell, Springfield say cities would welcome economic jolt
Two Democrats who have a chance to stamp their mark on Gov. Maura Healey’s plan to reinvigorate the state’s business climate want the benefits to stretch beyond the Boston metropolitan area.
Posted inUncategorized
Biotech’s next destination: Why not Lynn?
AFFECTIONATELY KNOWN as an industrial hub hundreds of years ago, Lynn became known as the “shoe center of the new world” by the 1800s, thanks to the establishment and growth of the first tannery in the US in the mid-1600s. The exponential economic growth led corporations, such as Edison General Electric, to move to Lynn […]
Posted inOpinion
Lawrence no longer a ‘city of the damned’
TEN YEARS AGO, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston released “Lessons from Resurgent Cities,” in which they set out to discover the “secret sauce” that enabled some mid-sized industrial cities in New England to bounce back and thrive while others shriveled and died. In their report, the Fed found a few expected ingredients—higher levels of […]
Posted inOpinion
Is it the end or the beginning for cities?
WITH TIME ON OUR HANDS, we’re all contemplating how our lives will be different in the future, once the COVID-19 pandemic subsides. At this point, almost every news source has run a piece declaring that the virus will somehow spell “the end of the city.” Most of these essays are hyperbolic, but it is nevertheless […]
Posted inEducation
In Gateway Cities, lots of hurdles to remote learning
SARINA ALVES DISPLAYS a short story on the screen in front of her virtual class of eighth grade English students at Morton Middle School in Fall River. As a boy reads out loud, Alves’s own child makes noise in the background. The boy pauses to struggle with a word with an apology, “Sorry, I’m reading […]
Posted inEducation
School committee OKs novel New Bedford charter deal
THE NEW BEDFORD SCHOOL COMMITTEE voted 5-2 on Thursday night in favor of a precedent-setting expansion deal with a local charter school operator, but even the five supporters insisted they didn’t like the arrangement and were voting for it only because state officials were figuratively holding a gun to their head. The school committee vote […]
Posted inEducation
Local accountability in schools lacking, says report
MASSACHUSETTS HAS BUILT its school reform effort on a combination of new state funding and accountability measures that track student and district achievement, but that has largely let local districts off the hook for setting ambitious goals of their own and holding themselves and schools responsible for meeting them. That’s the conclusion of a new […]
Posted inTransportation
Central Mass. lawmakers oppose commuter rail fare hike
FIFTEEN CENTRAL MASSACHUSETTS lawmakers are asking transportation officials to scrap a proposed increase in commuter rail fares, saying it will “result in a disparate financial burden” on people in their part of the state. The MBTA on Jan. 28 announced a proposal to raise more than $32 million in new revenues by hiking bus, subway, […]