@jacremes @TomSugrue In Boston, I think there's also real desire to not let wealthy suburbs stop new housing construction. Forgoing the chance to rezone Lincoln-Weston-Wellesley-Needham on this map indicates that's not front-of-mind here, though...
@jacremes @TomSugrue Also the politics of this mega-Boston would never elect a Rob Ford--eyeballing, the huge Dem votes in Cambridge/Somerville probably mean even in the 2018 Charlie Baker landslide the megacity would have stayed blue.
@jacremes @TomSugrue (Actually, probably not--I hadn't realized how close that race was in Boston proper, just 3K votes. Those margins in Quincy and Waltham etc. could probably swamp out Camberville. But that's the exception that proves the rule; it takes a candidate who could plausibly win Boston.)
@jacremes @TomSugrue Yeah, the political landscape of Boston vs Toronto is just utterly different. I can't find a precinct-level map of the 2018 gov election, but here's 2020 presidential. Camberville and Newton/Brookline both have insanely liberal pops of a sort that didn't exist in Toronto suburbs.
@jacremes @TomSugrue I have never heard an argument for NYC or Philly expansion, but one of the reasons that it gets pushed in Boston is that it *doesn't* have the political segmentation you'd expect. Camberville+Newton+Brookline is another 350K people on top of 650K in Boston proper.
@jacremes @TomSugrue Here are the state senate districts by their vote in the 2018 Baker landslide.I tried to vaguely trace the city borders in purple. These have the additional benefit they ought to be equal-population... Absolute-worse-case, you're getting 6 additional D strongholds.
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