BOSTON METROPLEX SPRAWL OF 2076

The City of Boston, Massachusetts has a long history. Settled in 1630, Boston has been a hotbed of radical revolution, a stone of conservatism, a world-class shipping port and shipbuilding center, an industrial center, home to renowned learning centers, an entry port for waves of immigrants, and a center of techno logic development.

 

It has also been home to political scalawags, red-light districts, racial confrontations, slums, industrial waste problems, and financial scandals. Just like any great American city, but with one of the longest histories this side of the Atlantic.

 

Once nestled on a small neck of land in a harbor guarded by islands, the City of Boston has expanded to include just about all land inside the old Route 128 belt. Arms of sprawl extend north through Lowell and Lawrence to Nashua New Hampshire, north along the coast to Portland, west to Worcester and the northwest corner of Connecticut, south along the coast to Taunton, New Bedford, and Fall River, and south west to Rhode Island.

 

Nor is the Boston Sprawl a lone island of sprawl, like Seattle. The edge of the New York sprawl is a short hop down the fast surface or air service through Connecticut. Some social commentators feel it IS one sprawl clean down to DC, and that the thinning between Hartford and Worcester, along the New Hampshire and Maine coasts, or New Haven and Providence, don’t count as edges.

 

The Boston Sprawl is generally divided into Downtown, North shore, Metrowest, South shore, Maine, and Rhode Island (only in Providence do they believe that Rhode Island is really a separate entity).