Boston, Massachusetts is largest city in Massachusetts and the state capital. Boston is one of the oldest cities in the United States and the largest in New England. Boston makes up the larger majority of Suffolk County and is the county seat. The city of Boston, with a population of 645,169 (2009 estimated U.S. Census), ranks as the twentieth largest city in the country. Boston is the anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area known as “Greater Boston,” an area that shares economic and social conditions with Boston proper. Greater Boston is home to 4.5 million people, making it the tenth-largest metropolitan area in the country. Boston was the site of several firsts, including America’s first public school, Boston Latin School, and the first subway system in the United States.
In 1630, Puritan colonists from England founded the city of Boston on the Shawmut Peninsula. Boston saw several major events during the American Revolution, including the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. Several of the early battles of the American Revolution, such as the Battle of Bunker Hill and the Siege of Boston, were also fought here. After American independence was attained, Boston became a major shipping port and manufacturing center.
A significant concentration of the industrial and manufacturing industry – right along Route 128 – includes part Boston proper and part Greater Boston Area. The roadway, a dividing line between Boston proper and Greater Boston, is a beltway around Boston with a dense concentration of high-technology enterprises. A second “tech hub” is adjacent Interstate 495, which is a bit further west of route 128. Boston’s future as a critical manufacturing hub depends on its continued preeminence in the production of computers, optical equipment, and other sophisticated instruments. Important areas of manufacturing include electronic devices and other electronic equipment, industrial machinery and equipment, instrumentation and related products, hi-tech printing and publishing, chemicals and allied products, food and food products, and the fabrication of metals.
With the concentration of colleges and universities within the city and the immediate surrounding area, Boston has become an international center of higher education and a center for medicine. One of Boston’s niche economies lies in the field of research, principally biotechnology. Other leading economic fields are the manufacturing of surgical medical devices and electronic medical devices; as one can see, the field of medicine and Boston go hand in hand.
Boston boasts some of the nation’s most highly regarded hospitals and institutions of medical learning. Massachusetts General Hospital is a biomedical research facility and a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. Children’s Hospital Boston ranked in the top three of all pediatric specialty categories and number one in heart care and heart surgery, neurology and neurosurgery, urology, nephrology, and orthopedics. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s clinical initiatives, thriving research enterprise, and an unparalleled Harvard-affiliated medical education program are the kind of credentials you will find at over half of the Boston hospitals.
Boston’s concentration of high tech manufacturing, metal and plastic products manufacturing, and chemical and solvent industries is a formula for success. It also provides the environment for industrial accidents, social security disability, and workers’ compensation. Workers’ compensation in Massachusetts is administered by the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development. Workers who are denied compensation or who believe they are not getting proper compensation can file a dispute with the Department of Industrial Accidents.
