Boston, Massachusetts - Transatlantic Cities Network
Boston was founded on a peninsula along the North Atlantic coast in a six-state region known as New England, and sits at the mouth of the Charles River on an inlet of Massachusetts Bay. A very compact city, Boston is the capital of the state of Massachusetts and the largest and most influential city in New England.
History | Government | Economy | Demographics | Education/Culture
Population: 599,351 (Census 2007) Metro Area: 5,819,100 (Census 2000) Density: 12,165 people/sq mi Land Area: 48 square miles Mayor: Thomas Menino (D) TCN Representative: Michael Lake, World Class Cities Partnership
History
Boston was one of the earliest major cities in America and became an important center of the American independence movement in the 1770s. Its location on Boston Harbor and relative proximity to Europe made Boston a major trading post before the city transitioned to a textile manufacturing, banking, and fishing power in late 19th century. An influx of immigrants, mostly from Ireland, supported Boston through the Industrial Revolution, until the 1920s, when the city began to experience industrial and economic decline. The Prohibition destroyed Boston’s rum trade, the Great Depression undermined its growing financial market, and the textile industry began to move to the South in search of cheap labor.
While the city’s manufacturing sector continued to decline in the postwar era, Boston experienced a general renaissance after revamping its infrastructure and reinvesting in its downtown. In the 1970s, violent protests followed the attempt to integrate the city’s public schools, which at that time were segregated along ethnic and racial lines. More recently, the city undertook one of the largest and the most expensive public works projects in the country, the Central Artery/Tunnel project or “The Big Dig.” The project replaced a six-lane elevated highway with an underground expressway and constructed a tunnel connecting South Boston and East Boston under Boston Harbor, while attempting to also create 260 acres of parks and open spaces.
Government
Boston has a mayor-council form of government where the mayor is invested with broad executive powers and is elected to a four-year term. The 13 member city council (nine elected by district and four at-large) acts as the legislative branch and is elected every two years. The Boston area has been consistently liberal in politics and supportive of Democratic Party. As the capital of Massachusetts, Boston is home to many important state and federal buildings such as the Massachusetts State House, the John F. Kennedy Federal Office Building, and a United States Court of Appeals.
 Economy
Aside from Boston’s historically prominent manufacturing sector, major industries in the area include finance, high-technology research and development, tourism, medicine, education, and commercial fishing. Boston’s economy is largely driven by the area’s more than 100 colleges and universities, which provide a major source of employment and attract a variety of IT and biotech companies. Universities within the city limits—Boston University, Boston College, Northeastern University, and Emerson College—provide employment for 17% of the city’s population while prominent universities in the Greater Boston area—Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Tufts University—drive research and technology in the region. The city is consistently a top ten tourist destination in the U.S., bringing in nearly 20 million visitors who spend over $8 billion per year. Over the past decades, Boston has recovered from an unemployment rate nearing 20% in 1979 to an unemployment rate of just over 4% in 2007 (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Demographics
According to the Census Bureau, of the city’s 575,000 residents, 55% are white, 25% are black or African American, 14% are Hispanic or Latino, and 8% are Asian. Boston has a substantial foreign born population: more than a quarter of the population was born outside the country. The median annual income for a household in 2007 was just below the national average at around $48,000. In 1999, about 15% of Boston’s families were living below the nation’s poverty line.
Education/Culture
The Boston metropolitan area is a leader in education with more than 60 colleges and universities including: Northeastern University, Boston University, Boston College, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brandeis University, Tufts University, and Wellesley College. Historically, Boston has been a pioneer in education, with the establishment of the first free public school and the first public library in colonial America.
Boston has a rich heritage in American literature, especially during the nineteenth century. Essayists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, novelists Harriet Beecher Stowe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and writer and physician Oliver Wendell Holmes called Boston home, as did the oldest general magazine published in the United States, The Atlantic Monthly. Today, Boston has a variety of museums, including the renowned Museum of Fine Arts, and an active theatre district.
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