Greater Boston facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Greater Boston
Combined Statistical Area
Boston in July 2015
Country	United States
State	Massachusetts New Hampshire Rhode Island
Principal cities	Boston Worcester Providence Cambridge Manchester Lowell Brockton  Quincy Lynn New Bedford
Population  (2020)
• Total	8,466,186 (CSA) 4,941,632 (MSA)
• Rank	Ranked 6th in the US for Combined Statistical Areas Ranked 10th in the US for Metropolitan Statistical Areas
GDP
• Boston (MSA)	$571.7 billion (2022)
Time zone	UTC−5 (EST)
• Summer (DST)	UTC−4 (EDT)
Area code(s)	617, 781, 857, 339, 978, 508, 351, 774, 603, 401

Greater Boston is the metropolitan region of New England encompassing the municipality of Boston, the capital of the U.S. state of Massachusetts and the most populous city in New England, and its surrounding areas. The most stringent definition of the region consists of most of the eastern third of mainland Massachusetts, excluding the Merrimack Valley and most of Southeastern Massachusetts, though most definitions (including the US Census definition) include much of these areas and portions of southern New Hampshire.

While the city of Boston covers 48.4 square miles (125 km²) and has 675,647 residents as of the 2020 census, the urbanization has extended well into surrounding areas and the Combined Statistical Area (CSA in the rest of the document), which includes the Providence, Rhode Island, Manchester, New Hampshire, Cape Cod and Worcester areas, has a population of more than 8.4 million people, making it one of the most populous such regions in the U.S.

Some of Greater Boston's most well-known contributions involve the region's higher education and medical institutions. Greater Boston has been influential upon American history and industry. The region and the state of Massachusetts are global leaders in biotechnology, artificial intelligence, engineering, higher education, finance, and maritime trade.

Greater Boston is ranked tenth in population among US metropolitan statistical areas, home to 4,941,632 people as of the 2020 United States Census, and sixth among combined statistical areas, with a population of 8,466,186. The area has hosted many people and sites significant to American culture and history, particularly American literature, politics, and the American Revolution.

Plymouth was the site of the first colony in New England, founded in 1620 by the Pilgrims, passengers of the Mayflower. In 1692, the town of Salem and surrounding areas experienced one of America's most infamous cases of mass hysteria, the Salem witch trials. In the late 18th century, Boston became known as the "Cradle of Liberty" for the agitation there that led to the American Revolution.

The Greater Boston region has played a powerful scientific, commercial, and cultural role in the history of the United States. Before the American Civil War, the region was a center for the abolitionist, temperance, and transcendentalist movements. In 2004, Massachusetts became the first U.S. state to legally recognize same-sex marriage as a result of the decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Boston. Many prominent American political dynasties have hailed from the Boston region, including the Adams and Kennedy families.

Harvard University in Cambridge is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States, with the largest financial endowment of any university, and whose Law School has spawned a contemporaneous majority of United States Supreme Court Justices. Kendall Square in Cambridge has been called "the most innovative square mile on the planet", in reference to the high concentration of entrepreneurial start-ups and quality of innovation which have emerged in the vicinity of the square since 2010. Both Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also in Cambridge, have been ranked among the most highly regarded academic institutions in the world.

Geography

Boundary definitions

Metropolitan Area

The most restrictive definition of the Greater Boston area is the region administered by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council. The MAPC is a regional planning organization created by the Massachusetts legislature 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. In 2013, the population of the MAPC district was 3.2 million, which was 48% of the total population of Massachusetts, in an area of 1,422 square miles (3,680 km²), of which 39% is forested and an additional 11% is water, wetland, or other open space.

The cities and towns included in this definitions are:

Metropolitan Area

Two definitions are used by the United States Census to define the Boston–Cambridge–Newton, MA–NH Metro Area or Boston–Cambridge–Newton, MA–NH Metropolitan NECTA, which is defined as a New England City and Town Area. The metro area definition is based on counties, while the NECTA definition is based on city and town boundaries. Counties included in the county-based definition include:

• Essex County, Massachusetts
• Middlesex County, Massachusetts
• Norfolk County, Massachusetts
• Plymouth County, Massachusetts
• Suffolk County, Massachusetts
• Rockingham County, New Hampshire
• Strafford County, New Hampshire

The NECTA definition includes all of the communities from the MAPC definition, as well as the Merrimack Valley communities, parts of southern New Hampshire (northward to Milford and Hampton, and the Taunton area.

Cambridge and Boston with MIT and Kendall Square in the foreground and Boston's Financial District in the background

Combined Statistical Area

The widest definition of the metropolitan area based on commuting patterns, is defined by the U.S. Census as the Boston–Worcester–Providence combined statistical area. This area consists of the following counties in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire:

Downtown Providence, Rhode Island in 2008

• Connecticut
  • Windham County, Connecticut
• Massachusetts
  • Barnstable County, Massachusetts
  • Bristol County, Massachusetts
  • Essex County, Massachusetts
  • Middlesex County, Massachusetts
  • Norfolk County, Massachusetts
  • Plymouth County, Massachusetts
  • Suffolk County, Massachusetts
  • Worcester County, Massachusetts
• New Hampshire
  • Belknap County, New Hampshire
  • Hillsborough County, New Hampshire
  • Merrimack County, New Hampshire
  • Rockingham County, New Hampshire
  • Strafford County, New Hampshire
• Rhode Island
  • Bristol County, Rhode Island
  • Kent County, Rhode Island
  • Newport County, Rhode Island
  • Providence County, Rhode Island
  • Washington County, Rhode Island

The total population for the extended region was estimated at 8,466,186 at the 2020 census.

Subregions

• Massachusetts
  • Central Massachusetts
    • Montachusett-North County
    • South County
    • Blackstone River Valley
    • North Shore
    • Cape Ann
  • Merrimack Valley
  • MetroWest
  • Southeastern Massachusetts
    • Cape Cod
  • South Coast
  • South Shore
• New Hampshire
  • Lakes Region
  • Seacoast
• Rhode Island
  • Blackstone Valley
  • East Bay

Climate

The Boston area has humid continental climates (Dfa and Dfb under the Köppen climate classification system), with high humidity and precipitation year-round.

Demographics

St. Patrick's Day Parade in Scituate, Massachusetts, in Plymouth County, the municipality with the highest percentage identifying Irish ancestry in the United States, at 47.5% in 2010. Irish Americans constitute the largest ethnicity in Greater Boston.

Boston's Chinatown, with its paifang gate, is home to many Chinese and also Vietnamese restaurants.

Boston gay pride march, held annually in June

Greater Boston has a sizable Jewish community, estimated at between 210,000 people, and 261,000 or 5–6% of the Greater Boston metro population, compared with about 2% for the nation as a whole. Contrary to national trends, the number of Jews in Greater Boston has been growing, fueled by the fact that 60% of children in Jewish mixed-faith families are raised Jewish, compared with roughly one in three nationally.

The City of Boston also has one of the largest LGBT populations per capita. It ranks fifth of all major cities in the country (behind San Francisco, and slightly behind Seattle, Atlanta, and Minneapolis), with 12.3% of the city identifying as gay, lesbian, or bisexual.

The 40 most diverse Census tracts in the Boston CSA:

The 40 census tracts in the Boston CSA with the highest percentage of residents who identify as Hispanic or Latino:

Census tracts in the Boston CSA with the highest percentage of residents who identify as Black American:

Census tracts in the Boston CSA with the highest percentage of residents who identify as Asian American:

Census tracts in the Boston CSA with the highest percentage of residents who identify as Irish American:

Census tracts in the Boston CSA with the highest percentage of residents who identify as Italian American:

Census tracts in the Boston CSA with the highest percentage of residents who identify as Portuguese American:

Census tracts in the Boston CSA with French or French Canadian listed as first ancestry:

Largest cities and towns

Cities and towns with a population over 50,000 as of the 2020 census include:

Rank	Name	State	Population (2020)	Population (2010)	Change
1.	Boston	Massachusetts	675,647	617,594	&10000000000000009399864+9.40%
2.	Worcester		206,518	181,045	&10000000000000014069982+14.07%
3.	Providence	Rhode Island	190,934	178,042	&10000000000000007240988+7.24%
4.	Cambridge	Massachusetts	118,403	105,162	&10000000000000012591049+12.59%
5.	Manchester	New Hampshire	115,644	109,565	&10000000000000005548304+5.55%
6.	Lowell	Massachusetts	115,554	106,519	&10000000000000008482054+8.48%
7.	Brockton		105,643	93,810	&10000000000000012613793+12.61%
8.	Quincy		101,636	92,271	&10000000000000010149451+10.15%
9.	Lynn		101,253	90,329	&10000000000000012093569+12.09%
10.	New Bedford		101,079	95,072	&10000000000000006318369+6.32%
11.	Fall River		94,000	88,857	&10000000000000005787951+5.79%
12.	Nashua	New Hampshire	91,322	86,494	&10000000000000005581890+5.58%
13.	Lawrence	Massachusetts	89,143	76,377	&10000000000000016714455+16.71%
14.	Newton		88,923	85,146	&10000000000000004435910+4.44%
15.	Cranston	Rhode Island	82,934	80,387	&10000000000000003168422+3.17%
16.	Warwick		82,823	82,672	&10000000000000000182649+0.18%
17.	Somerville	Massachusetts	81,045	75,754	&10000000000000006984449+6.98%
18.	Pawtucket	Rhode Island	75,604	71,148	&10000000000000006263001+6.26%
19.	Framingham	Massachusetts	72,362	68,318	&10000000000000005919377+5.92%
20.	Haverhill		67,787	60,879	&10000000000000011347098+11.35%
21.	Malden		66,263	59,450	&10000000000000011460050+11.46%
22.	Waltham		65,218	60,632	&10000000000000007563662+7.56%
23.	Brookline		63,191	58,732	&10000000000000007592113+7.59%
24.	Revere		62,186	51,755	&10000000000000020154574+20.15%
25.	Plymouth		61,217	56,468	&10000000000000008410072+8.41%
26.	Medford		59,659	56,173	&10000000000000006205828+6.21%
27.	Taunton		59,408	55,874	&10000000000000006324945+6.32%
28.	Weymouth		57,437	53,743	&10000000000000006873453+6.87%
29.	Peabody		54,481	51,251	&10000000000000006302316+6.30%
30.	Methuen		53,059	47,255	&10000000000000012282298+12.28%

Education

Harvard University, a leading global university, is located in Cambridge, MA in Greater Boston

A long established 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. Greater Boston contains seven R1 Research Institutions as per the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. This is, by far, the highest number of such institutions in a single Metropolitan Statistical Area in the United States.

Economy

Major companies

References:

Transportation

Interstates

• I‑90
• I‑93
• I‑95
• I‑190
• I‑195
• I‑290
• I-293
• I-295
• I-395
• I‑495

U.S. Routes

• US 1
• US 3
• US 6
• US 20
• US 44

State Highways

• Route 1A
• Route 2
• Route 2A
• Route 3
• Route 3A
• Route 4
• Route 9
• Route 16
• Route 18
• Route 24
• Route 25
• Route 27
• Route 28
• Route 30
• Route 38
• Route 53
• Route 58
• Route 60
• Route 62
• Route 97
• Route 106
• Route 109
• Route 110
• Route 113
• Route 114
• Route 115
• Route 117
• Route 122
• Route 123
• Route 125
• Route 126
• Route 128
• Route 129
• Route 133
• Route 135
• Route 138
• Route 139
• Route 140
• Route 146
• Route 213
• Route 225

Bridges and tunnels

• Boston University Bridge, carrying Route 2
• Callahan Tunnel, carrying Route 1A Northbound
• Charles M. Braga Jr. Memorial Bridge, carrying Interstate 195
• Claiborne Pell Newport Bridge, carrying Route 138
• Fore River Bridge, carrying Massachusetts Route 3A
• Harvard Bridge, carrying Route 2A
• Longfellow Bridge, carrying Massachusetts Route 3, US Route 3, and the MBTA Red Line
• North Washington Street Bridge, carrying Route 99
• Sumner Tunnel, carrying Route 1A Southbound
• Ted Williams Tunnel, carrying I-90
• Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. Tunnel, carrying I-93 and Routes 1 and 3 concurrently
• Tobin Bridge, carrying Route 1
• Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge, carrying Interstate 93, Route 1 and Route 3 concurrently

Airports

• Logan International Airport in Boston, 3 miles (4.8 km) northeast of downtown Boston, New England's largest transportation center
• Manchester–Boston Regional Airport in Manchester, New Hampshire
• T. F. Green Airport in Warwick, Rhode Island
• Hanscom Field in Bedford
• Norwood Memorial Airport
• Worcester Regional Airport
• Beverly Regional Airport
• Lawrence Municipal Airport

Rail and bus

The MBTA district, with Commuter Rail lines in purple

• Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA, generally known as the "T") rapid transit lines:
  • Red Line heavy rail: Cambridge–Braintree and Boston (Dorchester)
  • Orange Line heavy rail: Boston (Jamaica Plain)–Malden
  • Blue Line heavy rail: Boston–Revere
  • Green Line light rail/streetcar: Medford–Brighton, Brookline, and Newton
  • Ashmont–Mattapan High-Speed Line streetcar: Ashmont–Milton–Mattapan
  • Silver Line bus rapid transit South Station–Logan Airport and Downtown–[[{{{station}}} (MBTA station)|{{{station}}}]]
• MBTA Commuter Rail
  • Old Colony Lines serving Plymouth County
  • Providence/Stoughton Line serving northern Bristol County, central Norfolk County, Kent County, and Washington County, connecting to Providence, Rhode Island
  • Fairmount Line shuttle service from South Station
  • Franklin/Foxboro Line serving western Norfolk County
  • Greenbush Line serving Boston's South Shore
  • Needham Line serving Boston suburbs and Needham
  • 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 & Boston's North Shore
• Amtrak service to New York City, Washington, D.C. and Chicago from South Station
• Amtrak Downeaster service to Maine from North Station
• Massport Logan Express
• Plymouth & Brockton Street Railway Co.

The first railway line in the United States was in Quincy. See Neponset River.

The following Regional Transit Authorities have bus service that connects with MBTA commuter rail stations:

• Brockton Area Transit Authority
• Cape Ann Transportation Authority
• Greater Attleboro Taunton Regional Transit Authority
• Lowell Regional Transit Authority
• Merrimack Valley Regional Transit Authority
• MetroWest Regional Transit Authority
• Montachusett Regional Transit Authority
• Rhode Island Public Transit Authority
• Worcester Regional Transit Authority

Ocean transportation

The Salem Ferry, 92 ft. Catamaran is photographed approaching its dock off Blaney Street at the Salem Maritime National Historic Site in Salem, Massachusetts, United States.

• Port of Boston (Massport)
• Cape Cod Canal

Sports

Annual sporting events include:

• The Boston Marathon, which follows a course from Hopkinton to Boston
• The Head of the Charles Regatta
• The Lenox Industrial Tools 301, Sylvania 300 and New Hampshire Indy 225 auto races at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway oval track.

The Greater Boston League, a high school athletic conference in Massachusetts.

See also

In Spanish: Gran Boston para niños