Vorlage:Infobox Metropolitan Area
Greater Boston is the area of the U.S. state of Massachusetts closely surrounding the city of Boston. In addition to Boston, other towns/cities include Cambridge, Quincy, Newton, and the largest town in Massachusetts by population, Framingham. Greater Boston overlaps the North and South Shores, as well as the MetroWest region. Greater Boston is more urbanized than the other regions of Massachusetts, such as the more rural Western Massachusetts and the beach communities of Cape Cod. The area features many universities. There are a decreasing number of working class communities within Greater Boston.
Greater Boston encompasses many significant locations in American history and culture. Examples include the Paul Revere House, the Old North Church, the Old Granary Burying Ground, the site of the Boston Tea Party, the Battle of Bunker Hill, USS Constitution, Lexington and Concord, Walden Pond, the site of the Salem witch trials, and the Christian Science Mother Church. Former President John Adams was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, as was former President John Quincy Adams. Frederick Douglass began his career as an abolitionist in Boston. Former President John F. Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts. Former President George H. W. Bush was born in Milton. Malcolm X spent a significant part of his young adulthood in Roxbury, Boston and joined the Nation of Islam while in prison in Charlestown. The National Archives has a regional center in Waltham.
Definitions
Metropolitan Area Planning Council
The most restrictive definition of the Greater Boston area is the region administered by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC).[1] The MAPC is a regional planning organization created by the General Court of Massachusetts to oversee transportation infrastructure and economic development concerns in the Boston area. The MAPC includes 101 cities and towns that are grouped into eight subregions. These include most of the area within the region's outer circumferential highway, I-495. The population of the MAPC is 3,066,394 (as of 2000) covering an area of 1,422 square miles,[1] of which 39% is forested and an additional 11% is water, wetland, or other open space.[2]
The eight subregions and their principal towns are: Inner Core (Boston), Minuteman (Route 2 corridor), MetroWest (Framingham), North Shore (Peabody), North Suburban (Woburn), South Shore (Route 3 corridor), SouthWest (Franklin), and Three Rivers (Norwood).
Notably excluded from the MAPC and its partner transportation-planning body, the Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization, are the Merrimack Valley cities of Lowell, Lawrence, and Haverhill, much of Plymouth County, and all of Bristol County; these areas have their own regional planning bodies.
New England City and Town Area
The urbanized area surrounding Boston serves as the core of a definition used by the U.S. Census Bureau known as the New England City and Town Area. The set of towns containing the core urbanized area plus surrounding towns with strong social and economic ties to the core area is defined as the Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH Metropolitan NECTA.[3] The Boston NECTA is further subdivided into several NECTA divisions, which are listed below. The Boston, Framingham, and Peabody NECTA divisions together correspond roughly to the MAPC area. The total population of the Boston NECTA was 4,540,941 (as of 2000).
- Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA NECTA Division (97 towns)
- Framingham, MA NECTA Division (13 towns)
- Peabody, MA NECTA Division (7 towns)
- Brockton-Bridgewater-Easton, MA NECTA Division (Old Colony region) (12 towns)
- Haverhill-North Andover-Amesbury, MA-NH NECTA Division (Merrimack Valley region) (25 towns)
- Lawrence-Methuen-Salem, MA-NH NECTA Division (part of Merrimack Valley region) (3 towns)
- Lowell-Billerica-Chelmsford, MA-NH NECTA Division (Northern Middlesex region) (9 towns)
- Nashua, NH-MA NECTA Division (21 towns)
- Taunton-Norton-Raynham, MA NECTA Division (part of Southeastern region) (6 towns)
Metropolitan statistical area
An alternative definition used by the U.S. Census Bureau using counties as building blocks instead of towns is the Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is further subdivided into four metropolitan divisions. The metropolitan statistical area has a total population of about 4.4 million and is the eleventh-largest in the United States. The components of the metropolitan area with their 2005 populations are listed below.
- Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH Metropolitan Statistical Area (4,411,835)
- Boston-Quincy, MA Metropolitan Division (1,800,432)
- Cambridge-Newton-Framingham, MA Metropolitan Division (1,459,011)
- Essex County, MA Metropolitan Division (738,301)
- Rockingham County-Strafford County, NH Metropolitan Division (414,091)
Combined statistical area
A wider functional metropolitan area based on commuting patterns is also defined by the Census Bureau as the Boston-Worcester-Manchester, MA-RI-NH Combined Statistical Area, the fifth largest in the country. This area consists of the metropolitan areas of Manchester, Worcester, and Providence, in addition to Greater Boston. The total population (as of 2005) for the extended region is 7,427,336. The following areas, along with the above MSA, are included in the Combined Statistical Area:
- Concord, NH Micropolitan Statistical Area (146,681)
- Laconia, NH Micropolitan Statistical Area (61,547)
- Manchester-Nashua, NH Metropolitan Statistical Area (401,291)
- Worcester, MA Metropolitan Statistical Area (783,262)
- Providence-New Bedford-Fall River, RI-MA Metropolitan Statistical Area (1,622,520)
Major cities and towns
Boston metropolitan area
Satellite areas
Major companies
CVS/pharmacy started in the Greater Boston Area, in Lowell, Massachusetts. Likewise, Dunkin Donuts and Howard Johnson's restaurants and lodgings started just outside Boston in Quincy.
- Companies along, inside or outside I-495
- 3Com, in Marlboro (Headquarters)
- AMD, in Marlboro
- Analog Devices, in Norwood
- Avid Technology, Inc, in Tewksbury (Headquarters)
- BJ's Wholesale Club, Inc., in Natick (Headquarters)
- Bose Corporation, in Framingham (Headquarters)
- Boston Scientific Corporation, in Natick (Headquarters)
- Boston Scientific Corporation, in Marlboro
- Diebold, in Marlboro (Regional Headquarters)
- EMC Corporation, in Hopkinton (Headquarters)
- Intel, in Hudson
- TJX Corporation, in Framingham (Headquarters)
- Monster.com, in Maynard, Massachusetts (Headquarters)
- Staples, Inc., in Framingham (Headquarters)
- TripAdvisor, LLC, in Needham (Headquarters)
- Companies along or inside I-95 (Route 128)
- Akamai Technologies, in Cambridge
- BBN Technologies, in Cambridge (Headquarters)
- Biogen Idec, in Cambridge
- Dunkin Donuts, in Canton (Headquarters)
- Genzyme Corporation, in Cambridge (Headquarters)
- iRobot Corporation, in Burlington (Headquarters)
- InterSystems Corporation, in Cambridge, Massachusetts (Headquarters)
- Meditech, in Westwood (Headquarters)
- Millennium Pharmaceuticals, in Cambridge
- National Amusements (Parent company of CBS), in Dedham (Headquarters)
- Novartis AG, Inc, in Cambridge (Research Headquarters)
- Novell, Inc., in Waltham
- Raytheon, in Waltham (Headquarters)
- Reebok, in Canton (U.S. Headquarters)
- Sun Microsystems , in Burlington
- Polaroid Corporation, in Waltham
- WB Mason, in Brockton (Headquarters)
- Major companies inside Boston (Inside I-95 (Route 128))
- Bain & Company (headquarters)
- The Boston Consulting Group (headquarters)
- Fidelity Investments (headquarters)
- The Gillette Company, now owned by Procter & Gamble (headquarters)
- Houghton Mifflin (headquarters)
- John Hancock Financial Services, Inc, now the United States division of Canada's Manulife Financial
- Liberty Mutual
- New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc (headquarters)
- State Street Corporation
- Teradyne
Sports
Annual sporting events include:
- The Boston Marathon follows a course from Hopkinton to Boston
- The Head of the Charles Regatta
Higher education
A long time center of higher education, the area includes many community colleges, two-year schools, and internationally prominent undergraduate and graduate institutions. The graduate schools include highly regarded schools of law, medicine, business, technology, international relations, public health, education, and religion. Vorlage:See also
Historical figures and celebrities
- John Adams - 2nd President of the United States
- John Quincy Adams - 6th President of the United States
- Samuel Adams - brewer, patriot
- Aerosmith - rock band
- Boston (band) - rock band
- Ben Affleck - actor
- Louisa May Alcott - writer
- Eric Bogosian - actor
- Charles Bulfinch - architect
- Steven Carell - actor/comedian
- John Cena- professional wrestler
- Dane Cook - comedian
- John Singleton Copley - painter
- Matt Damon - actor
- Dispatch - rock band
- James Dole - founder of Dole Food Company
- Michael Dukakis - former Massachusetts Governor, Democratic candidate in the 1988 election
- Mary Dyer - religious martyr
- Ralph Waldo Emerson - transcendentalist
- Benjamin Franklin - statesman, scientist
- Buckminster Fuller - inventor
- Tom Glavine - MLB pitcher
- Peter Gammons - MLB writer
- Matt Hasselbeck - NFL quarterback
- Nathaniel Hawthorne - writer
- Nichole Hiltz - actress, The Riches, Shallow Hal
- Oliver Wendell Holmes - writer
- Winslow Homer - painter
- Edward M. Kennedy - United States Senator
- John F. Kennedy - 35th President of the United States
- John F. Kerry - United States Senator, Democratic candidate in the 2004 election
- Amos Lawrence - philanthropist
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - poet
- Robert Lowell - poet
- Cotton Mather - preacher, writer
- Leonard Nimoy - actor
- Tip O'Neill - longest serving Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
- Theodore Parker - transcendentalist
- Pixies - rock band
- Sylvia Plath - writer
- Edgar Allan Poe - writer
- Paul Revere - revolutionary
- Louis Sullivan - architect
- Donna Summer - singer
- Henry David Thoreau - writer
- Uma Thurman - actress
- Barbara Walters - newscaster
- Mark Wahlberg - actor
- Donnie Wahlberg - actor
- Daniel Webster - statesman
- Samuel Wilson - Uncle Sam
- James McNeill Whistler - painter
- Ted Williams - Boston Red Sox player
- Conan O'Brien - comedian
- Howie Long - NFL Hall of Famer, Fox NFL sports commentator
- Rev. Dr. Soliny Védrine - founder of Haitian Ministries International
Transportation
See also: Boston transportation
Highways
- Central Artery/Tunnel Project (Interstate 93 within Boston)
- Interstate 95: North to New Hampshire and Maine; south to Providence, Rhode Island and beyond. Largely concurrent with MA-128
- U.S. Route 1
- Interstate 93: North to New Hampshire; south to Canton
- US Route 3
- Massachusetts Route 2: Northwest and west
- The Massachusetts Turnpike (Interstate 90): West to Framingham, Massachusetts and beyond
- Massachusetts Route 9: Western suburbs
- Massachusetts Route 24: South toward Newport, Rhode Island
- Massachusetts Route 3: Southeast through South Shore to Cape Cod
- Massachusetts Route 128 (I-95/I-93): Circumferential Highway (close to Boston)
- Interstate 495: Circumferential (farther from Boston)
- Route 128 is sometimes regarded as the unofficial boundary of the Greater Boston region, especially to the north and south. When the name Greater Boston is used in a more inclusive sense, I-495 is sometimes regarded as the boundary.
Bridges and tunnels
Airports
- Logan International Airport in Boston
- Manchester-Boston Regional Airport in Manchester, New Hampshire
- T. F. Green Airport in Providence, Rhode Island
- Hanscom Field in Bedford
- Norwood Memorial Airport
- Worcester Regional Airport
Rail transportation
- Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA, The T)
- Red Line: Boston–Cambridge and Braintree
- Orange Line: Boston (Jamaica Plain)–Malden
- Green Line: Brookline and Newton–Cambridge
- Blue Line: Boston–Revere
- MBTA Commuter Rail
- Plymouth/Kingston Line and Middleborough/Lakeville Line serving Plymouth County
- Attleboro/Stoughton Line serving northern Bristol County, connecting to Providence, Rhode Island
- Franklin Line serving western Norfolk County
- Framingham/Worcester Line serving southwestern Middlesex County, connecting to Worcester
- Fitchburg Line serving northwestern Middlesex County, connecting to Fitchburg
- Lowell Line serving northern Middlesex County
- Haverhill/Reading Line and Newburyport/Rockport Line serving Essex County
- Amtrak
The first railway line in the United States was in Quincy. See Neponset River.
Ocean transportation
Geography
The highest point in the Greater Boston area is Bellevue Hill[4]. The lowest point is sea level.
References
- ↑ a b About MAPC. Metropolitan Area Planning Council, abgerufen am 14. Mai 2007.
- ↑ Boston Region MPO: Journey to 2030: Transportation Plan of the Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization. (PDF) 12. April 2007, S. 2-1, abgerufen am 14. Mai 2007.
- ↑ U.S. Census Bureau - Components of New England City and Town Areas
- ↑ http://www.hubonwheels.org/default.asp?go=rides&m=3 Hub on Wheels "Boston is an Island"