Design vs. Growth

[DaveRPI]

front page article on boston.com and from the boston globe:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/..._growth/?page=2

"One factor that drove prices up sharply during Boston's recent housing boom was a lack of supply stemming from limits on development in the city and the suburbs, where it is often difficult to obtain permits and where historic preservation is often a barrier to building. When the economy grows and housing demand increases, prices rise sharply in response to growing demand.

''If you don't permit, you don't grow population and you don't grow jobs," said Glaeser, director of Harvard's Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, a policy think tank. ''If you don't want to build, you've got to accept the fact that Boston is going to lose population, and you have to quit wringing our hands on this," he said."

"Boston, he said, ''is becoming a boutique town for educational elites instead of an economically diverse city."

There is a crystal ball that Providence residents can choose to look into, its 50 miles north and its called Boston.

[damus]

New York is probably the most culturally diverse city in the world, and their prices are pretty high. What Providence needs is for it and its surrounding communities to promote medium to high density developments instead of the more 'affordable' sprawl. This is a zoning problem. No one wants to put low income housing in town, and everyone wants a big yard. There's only so much space to go around.

[basachs]

front page article on boston.com and from the boston globe:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/..._growth/?page=2

"One factor that drove prices up sharply during Boston's recent housing boom was a lack of supply stemming from limits on development in the city and the suburbs, where it is often difficult to obtain permits and where historic preservation is often a barrier to building. When the economy grows and housing demand increases, prices rise sharply in response to growing demand.

''If you don't permit, you don't grow population and you don't grow jobs," said Glaeser, director of Harvard's Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, a policy think tank. ''If you don't want to build, you've got to accept the fact that Boston is going to lose population, and you have to quit wringing our hands on this," he said."

Historic preservation does not have to be a barrier to building. It should be a barrier to building crap. It should be a barrier to narrow and lazy thinking. Historic preservation stimulates a lot of creative building.

Also, population growth is not always a good thing. We are not exactly being smart about that either. Finite amount of land with an attitude that we can have infinite amount of people do not marry well.

[jencoleslaw]

Historic preservation does not have to be a barrier to building. It should be a barrier to building crap. It should be a barrier to narrow and lazy thinking. Historic preservation stimulates a lot of creative building.

Also, population growth is not always a good thing. We are not exactly being smart about that either. Finite amount of land with an attitude that we can have infinite amount of people do not marry well.

My Hero!

[runawayjim]

New York is probably the most culturally diverse city in the world, and their prices are pretty high.

new york is in a class of its own on this issue. their prices are high because there is so much offered there. providence can become more diverse economically and still remain affordable. the problem in boston is that there's a lot of high paying jobs, but not as much mid-range jobs. what i understood from the article is that there's a lot of academic type jobs, but not much else (academic meaning requiring advanced degrees, like minimum of masters, not necessarily academic being in education, although there's an abundance of those as well in boston).