A commercial market renaissance in Boston proper, which is luring startups from nearby Kendall Square in Cambridge, is only part of the changing landscape of Massachusetts’ living and working scenario.
The Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) has been collecting data on migration patterns for decades. Tim Reardon, planning research manager in MAPC’s data services department, notes a change in population patterns from 2006 to 2010 in which there’s been an influx of people aged 25 to 44 not only to Boston and Cambridge, but also to Brookline, Medford and Arlington. And more middle-aged people are moving to what used to be called the “streetcar suburbs” of Newton, Watertown and Arlington.
Within the Route 128 belt, there are 300 proposals in planning or development status, comprising 30,000 housing units and 30 million square feet of commercial space. Reardon says there is considerable market interest in making the proposals become the reality. The regional challenge, he says, is to work with cities, towns and developers to create a mix of units that meets the region’s needs.
“We can’t just do micro apartments or luxury condos,” Reardon offered.
In the last four years, old-style modes of living and working have been replaced by newer, more fluid concepts. One example is what was formerly known as the Mall at Chestnut Hill, recently rebranded as “The Street.” Large buildings that housed department-store anchor tenants have been demolished, and in their place stand newer structures which can house many smaller retail and restaurant tenants. This kind of reuse has helped revive and recreate the Urban Village concept that encourages a 24-hour presence.
“That will drive where the future labor pool is located,” Reardon says. “People are more comfortable with settling down inside Route 128. I think that’s a reversal of some of the trends, where they almost automatically moved out to the Concords, Actons and Hopkintons of the world.”
Economic Benefits
There is an increasing body of evidence that what Reardon calls settlement patterns are changing, not only in Boston but in other regions, where younger working adults forming families and households are more likely to be living near the urban core than they were in the 1980s and 1990s.
“People want to be near cultural and social amenities,” Reardon says. There are also economic benefits to doing so, such as eliminating the need for one car for every driver in the household, being able to walk to some destinations, and living a short distance from a child’s school.
“We see it from data we have from vehicle registration,” he says — families, regardless of neighborhood income, own fewer cars inside Route 128.
The market, too, sees transit proximity as a good value. Last year, the Boston chapter of the Urban Land Institute issued a study, Hub and Spoke: Core Transit Congestion and the Future of Transit and Development in Greater Boston, that assessed the value of public transit to residents and employers. Fully one quarter of all jobs in Massachusetts, and one out of six homes, are within a half mile of an MBTA subway, trolley or commuter rail station.
The study reported nearly 4.8 million square feet of commercial space under construction near transit, including new offices for major employers such as Google, Liberty Mutual and Vertex. More intensive use of existing commercial space is also driving up the number of jobs in transit station areas. Approximately 75,000 new housing units and office space for 130,000 new jobs could be created in transit station areas over the next two decades, the study reported.
The study determined that property values of Boston-area real estate farther than half a mile from transit declined during the real estate slump, while sales prices for property within a half mile of transit increased during the market crash.
“The evidence is there that the market sees transit proximity as good value,” says Reardon. But, he warns, unless the state maintains the transit infrastructure, its desirability will decline, putting at risk billions of dollars of private investment ready to get shovels into the ground.
Outside of Boston, other regional transit systems can each play an important role in secondary cities such as Worcester, Springfield, Lowell, and Brockton. Reardon says MAPC is studying migration patterns and anticipates the issuance of a regional housing plan in the coming months.
Lower income households, for which public transit is a necessity, not a choice, need more opportunities to live closer to transit nearer to where they work. A hallmark of many of the accounts of how low-income people live are the hours-long bus rides between home and work. Creating more deed-restricted housing units is one way to address that need.
Email: coneill@thewarrengroup.com
