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Comment by jsavimbi | Hacker News Reader

Just an aside for anyone who cares about maps and city boundaries, Cambridge is not a part of Boston and never was in any shape or form. I know the Boston Innovation guys are [really] trying to stretch it with this piece, but they got what the asked for when they named themselves after a city where very little innovation takes place.

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For almost everyone in the world outside of Cambridge, Boston and Cambridge are equivalent.

Even where I live in New Hampshire they're considered the same.

Sure, and Portsmouth, Worcester and Providence are all a part of Boston too, when you look at it from a financial perspective. But they're not. They are their own incorporated cities with elected governments, complete with by-laws and regulations, independent agencies, school systems, taxing, licensing and terms for residents and natives alike. Just like Bostonians and Cantabrigians. So no, not even in the remotest of terms, are Boston and Cambridge the same. They're not even in the same county.

And when you're writing a piece that even you know stretches the known boundaries of truth in order to promote your events publication, the least you can do is aim for a little bit of accuracy, even if it's just to save face. Truth isn't trivial.

I can take the Red Line from Park Street to Harvard Square. I can't take it to Worcester or Providence.

If Manhattan was its own city, it would still be associated with Brooklyn, because they're one subway stop or bridge walk apart.

You can take an MBTA train to both Worcester and Providence from Boston. The MBTA is also the authority that manages the subway system, the bus routes and other services in eastern Massachusetts. Not just Boston.

Anyone ever confuse Newark with NYC? How about Jersey City? And yes, Silicon Valley does not stretch from Sausalito to Berkeley through Oakland and SoMa down to San Jose, either. Especially when you're pushing mindless bragging rights.

Close. The MBTA owns the commuter rail but does not operate it. It is outsourced to the Mass Bay Commuter Rail Company.MBTA provides the ticketing but does not operate the trains. http://www.mbcr.net/

You can also take the Fung Wa from Chinatown to Chinatown for $20 but that will not keep them from being separate entities.

I'm living in Cambridge and it seems like pretty standard fare for people to consider it part of Boston. The T isn't just like other trains, its the intra-Boston trains.

Anywhere you can get to by taking the subway in NYC is part of NYC, that doesn't include Metro North or Amtrak. Similarly the T in Boston wouldn't include the commuter rail or whatever. I understand that they have separate governments, but they are directly touching; you can walk from Kendall across the bridge in 10 minutes. The government is irrelevant for this article, it's clearly talking about the geographical area.

Manhattan (well, it was just New York at the time) and Brooklyn were their own cities. Also, each NYC borough is in its own county (Manhattan --> New York County, Queens --> Queens County, Brooklyn --> Kings County, Bronx --> Bronx County, Staten Island --> Richmond County).

I'm from Quincy (separate city from Boston, but I don't bother to distinguish when I tell people where I'm from as no one knows where it is), so I can appreciate the fact that you're trying to promote accuracy.

That said, every article I've read about Silicon Valley for the past ten years includes places that aren't part of the valley, so I'm not so sure it's a great battle to fight.

I find the fact that 3 of the 6 languages he lists all being in the Lisp family is a little silly (not to mention that he counts C, because Ritchie was at Harvard at one point even though the language wasn't invented there; but at the same time also counts Scala, for the opposite reasons).

The Boston area isn't short of history, computer science-related, or otherwise. If he is trying to pound his chest about the cool things which have come from Boston, he shouldn't have to reach this hard.

Eh, I live in Cambridge but I tell everyone that I live in Boston. I suppose the article should have said the "Greater Boston Area."

Oh come on, BostInnovation is not a misnomer. There are plenty of certifiably innovative startups and several well-known VCs on the Right Bank of the Charles. Runkeeper and Cloudant are on the same floor of my former office building in the South End. Flybridge and Spark Capital both have offices in the Back Bay. There's a cleantech incubator called Greentown Labs in the Fort Point Channel district that houses some very innovative companies, as well as all of the Mass Challenge finalists in the Seaport (editorial comments about Mass Challenge aside, many of these companies are IMHO quite novel and interesting). A new ed-tech startup and a micro-VC firm have recently set up shop in the Leather District near South Station. Oh yeah, and there's Skyhook Wireless and Where.com, and well, the list goes on...

In the author's defense, Cambridge is surrounded on three sides by Boston (Charlestown to the east, Back Bay to the south, and Allston to the west, all part of Boston).

That's incorrect.

Cambridge is bounded in its majority by Somerville, Belmont, Watertown, Arlington and Boston descending in size of the borders. The only areas where Cambridge physically meets Boston are located along Charlestown and East Cambridge and only so because they filled in Miller's River and I can hardly put a fair price on geographical ties based on what lies beneath the expressway. People from East Cambridge do not have any historical or cultural ties with Charlestown and vice versa, except when the townies get locked up at the East Cambridge courthouse. Prior to that, there was no land-to-land contact and I cannot grant you the River Charles as a border because it is administered and policed by the state.

It's a separate city in a separate county with a separate culture of its own. Sure, if you're not from around here it's easy and practical to lump everything together as who really cares about imaginary lines on a map, but then again we lump all outsiders together as tourists so no harm, no foul. One thing is to speak out of convenience, but to purposely confuse the two is to mislead the reader.

I'm from one and I live in the other. To me there's a very big difference. And don't even get me started on Brookline.

I was going to make a Brookline joke, glad I didn't! :) Of course you're correct and I commend you for your knowledge of local geography and history.

BTW, If you haven't read "Gaining Ground: A History of Landmaking in Boston," I bet you'd enjoy it: http://www.amazon.com/Gaining-Ground-History-Landmaking-Bost...

Just added to the Wish List. Thanks!

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