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I don't think there will be many left. There are some very powerful forces driving the blandification of all modern medium to high population cities. I would ev

I don't think there will be many left. There are some very powerful forces driving the blandification of all modern medium to high population cities. I would even argue that cities can be "cool" and "unique" only when the super-majority of the population doesn't want to live in them.

ghaff 6y ago
I think there's a lot of truth to that. Cool, unique, edgy, hip, etc. US cities in the 70s/80s were also relatively gritty and dangerous. It was partly because most of the jobs (and essentially all the tech jobs) were out in the suburbs anyway but I don't think anyone from my 1986 grad school class who got jobs in the Boston area moved to the city proper.
- Dracophoenix 6y ago
  I would have thought most of the jobs outside of Boston proper were in Cambridge or Somerville (essentially cities in their own rights). Unless you were alluding computer manufacturers like DEC or Wang, or defense contractors like Raytheon and MITRE.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    They're not essentially cities; they are cities :-) There was relatively little tech in any of those three cities by around that time, though there were still a few companies like Polaroid. (And some small firms like Infocom.) When Teradyne moved out of Boston in the 90s, it was basically the last real tech company there. (Arthur D. Little in Fresh Pond also survived until dot-bomb.) Kendall Square was Draper Labs/Tech Square with a bunch of old brick manufacturing buildings/warehouses to the east. The modern Kendall Square is a relatively recent phenomenon. (And even my classmates who went into finance, working at Fidelity or Harvard, still lived in points at least somewhat west.) Pretty much all the tech companies in the Boston area were ones like you mention: DEC, Wang, DG (where I worked), Prime, Apollo, MITRE, Raytheon, etc. And they were pretty much all well west or sometimes north of the city.

ghaff 6y ago

I think there's a lot of truth to that. Cool, unique, edgy, hip, etc. US cities in the 70s/80s were also relatively gritty and dangerous. It was partly because most of the jobs (and essentially all the tech jobs) were out in the suburbs anyway but I don't think anyone from my 1986 grad school class who got jobs in the Boston area moved to the city proper.

Dracophoenix 6y ago
I would have thought most of the jobs outside of Boston proper were in Cambridge or Somerville (essentially cities in their own rights). Unless you were alluding computer manufacturers like DEC or Wang, or defense contractors like Raytheon and MITRE.
- ghaff 6y ago
  They're not essentially cities; they are cities :-) There was relatively little tech in any of those three cities by around that time, though there were still a few companies like Polaroid. (And some small firms like Infocom.) When Teradyne moved out of Boston in the 90s, it was basically the last real tech company there. (Arthur D. Little in Fresh Pond also survived until dot-bomb.) Kendall Square was Draper Labs/Tech Square with a bunch of old brick manufacturing buildings/warehouses to the east. The modern Kendall Square is a relatively recent phenomenon. (And even my classmates who went into finance, working at Fidelity or Harvard, still lived in points at least somewhat west.) Pretty much all the tech companies in the Boston area were ones like you mention: DEC, Wang, DG (where I worked), Prime, Apollo, MITRE, Raytheon, etc. And they were pretty much all well west or sometimes north of the city.