We're having some network problems over here at the .08 Acre homestead. Posting will be lighter than normal until I get a chance to fix our router. In the meantime, if you missed Michael Goodman's op ed in Sunday's Boston Globe, I'd encourage you to read it. In it, Goodman offers these common sense steps to go about reversing the Commonwealth's population decline:
Steps must be taken to reduce the state's high cost of living, especially housing. Local zoning and code enforcement in suburban communities already make it difficult to significantly add to the supply of affordable housing for working families and others. But the state already has an abundant supply of affordable housing units in many of its urban areas -- the challenge is to make these attractive enough for more people to live in these units. That means improving public education and public safety. Making our urban areas more attractive and compelling places to live -- for those residents already there as well as those who might be drawn to them -- is good social and economic policy.
Create the right environment to grow jobs. We have the workers; we have the brains to create new science and technology industries. What Massachusetts also needs is both the physical and intellectual infrastructure to grow the two together. That means not only laboratories and schools -- it also means better and more efficient investments in everything from K-12 education to higher education and lifelong learning.
Promote economic development beyond Greater Boston. Just as it makes sense to get people to live in housing units that are already available at affordable market rates, it also is good policy to locate jobs in lower-cost regions of the state where people already want and can afford to live. This means better marketing of the state beyond Route 495 to prospective job creators and investors. It will also require that strategic statewide and regional investments be made in the infrastructure and innovative capacity of these regions to better prepare them to meet the needs of growing employers.
Grow our own knowledge workers. The Census data show that people born here and immigrants who move here tend to stay. We cannot afford to lose them. We need to make sure that both populations achieve the education and skills training they need to be able to stay and thrive in the knowledge economy.
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