UPDATE: The Bay State’s unemployment rate over the 2009 calendar year was 8.4 percent, far above the 4.5 percent that we found worrying in 2007. See the map below for 2009 town-by-town figures, or get the 2007 and 2009 data as an Excel spreadsheet or PDF. The highest unemployment rates in 2009 were in Provincetown […]
Growth and Development
Posted inEconomy
The money pit
residents of massachusetts do not need to be reminded just how expensive construction can be. Now practically as famous as the Freedom Trail or the Red Sox, the Big Dig has come to represent everything good and bad about the Bay State. Once estimated to cost $2.2 billion, the tunnel and highway project cost more […]
Posted inEconomy
Mixed-use project raises hope for Salisbury Beach comeback
INTRO TEXT Like the wooden roller coaster that once dominated its Atlantic Ocean skyline, Salisbury Beach’s economic fortunes have climbed and fallen with changing times and demographics. Once a summer magnet drawing crowds from the Merrimack Valley and beyond to its wide sand beach and a center packed with rides, games, and other entertainment, Salisbury […]
Posted inEconomy, Health Care
CPA FUNDS BENEFIT THE ENTIRE STATE
The Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston’s report on the Community Preservation Act (“Study Says CPA Steers Money to Wealthy Towns,” Inquiries, CW, Summer ’07) is so flawed it is difficult to know where to begin. While it is true that many communities that adopted the Act initially had higher-than-average income levels, that trend began to […]
Posted inEconomy, Opinion, Politics
Down town
smart-growth policies are often associated with leafy suburbs in commuter rail territory (see Town Meeting Monitor). So it’s easy to forget that there are older cities in Massachusetts that already have all the right elements—high density, mixed-use zoning, extensive public transit—and have still fallen short of the urban village ideal. The city of Malden, where […]
Posted inEconomy, State House News Service
Study says CPA steers money to wealthy towns
INTRO TEXT when the community Preservation Act emerged from a tortuous legislative process to become law in 2000, state officials heralded it as the most significant land-use bill passed in years. Simultaneously adding to the state’s affordable-housing stock, preserving open space, and restoring historic buildings, it was billed as a planning and funding tool to […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics
Thinking big
Ansin has made mill redevelopmenthis passion—and the revival ofstruggling Bay State cities itshoped-for byproduct. if the walls of the Wood Worsted Mill in Lawrence could talk, they would tell the stories of thousands of immigrant laborers who landed at its looms, hoping to scratch out a better life along the banks of the Merrimack River. […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics
On second thought
UPDATE: Kingston’s Place turned out to be far from a done deal. The developer pulled the plug on the project in 2010. kingston — Residential growth, smart or otherwise, is rarely an easy sell in the outer Boston suburbs. Townsfolk fear that too many new homes and residents will erode the quality of life that […]
Posted inEconomy, Opinion
Plymouth’s Cordage park showed how to make Chapter 40R and smart growth work for both towns and developers
despite recent downward pressure on home prices, the cost of housing remains a major concern for nearly two-thirds of Massachusetts residents, according to a poll released in February by the University of Massachusetts and the Citizens’ Housing and Planning Association. The same poll found that residents overwhelmingly support the construction of affordable housing-even in their […]
Posted inEconomy
Getting smart
portland or maryland? Sticks or carrots? That’s the choice that the new administration needs to make as it translates candidate Deval Patrick’s stated support for smart growth into Gov. Patrick’s smart-growth policies. Specifically, should Massachusetts follow Oregon’s “big stick” approach of forcing localities to follow state guidelines when deciding where growth should and should not […]