Maps Show 'Class Divide' in Newton, Boston Area

Newton is populated almost entirely of individuals classified as the "creative class," according to an article posted on The Atlantic Cities.

The Atlantic piece, which analyzed U.S. Census data, named three sections of Newton as being in the top 10 creative class locations in the Boston area. 

In fact, that entire top 10 list of creative class locations is made up entirely of neighborhoods in Cambridge and Newton.

The creative class includes individuals who "work in science and technology, business and management, arts, culture media and entertainment, and law and healthcare professions," according to the article.

The three Newton areas that top the list of creative class locations are made up of 80 percent or more creative class residents, and are located between Newton Centre, Newton Highlands and Waban. 

The Atlantic article singles out Newton several times for its high population of creative class:

Further west, the historic colonial towns of Lexington and Concord, as well as Newton, Wellesley, and Sudbury, are historically wealthy places filled with old mansions. The suburbs with greatest concentrations of the creative class are mostly to the north and the west. All of them have excellent school systems and easy access to the city via rail and highways. Boston's Route 128 corridor, dubbed "America's Technology Highway," the birthplace of companies such as Digital Equipment Corporation, Data General, Bose, and countless others, runs through Newton, Framingham, and Waltham.

A map of the metro Boston area depicts the entire region by Census tracts. According to the map, most of Newton's neighborhoods are more than 60 percent creative class. The one exception is a portion of the northeast part of the city, in Nonantum, where the "service class" makes up 49 percent of the neighborhood and creative class makes up 38 percent.

The "service class" is defined in the article as people who perform "low-wage, low-skill work in routine jobs such as food service and preparation, retail sales, and clerical and administrative positions."

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What the map also shows is that, by and large, Newton is surrounded by towns full of creative class individuals, with the exception of parts of abutting Waltham and Brighton. Overall, however, Newton and the surrounding areas are dominated by the wealthier creative class.

Nowhere in Newton, and nowhere in Boston, is there an area dominated by the "working class" — a point The Atlantic article emphasizes.

As the article notes, "Boston, the veritable birthplace of America's industrial revolution, the hardscrabble working-class town where Whitey Bulger held sway for so long, hometown of the archetypal juvie-turned-rapper-turned-movie-star Mark Wahlberg, is now completely post industrial. There is not a single Census tract in the city where the working class makes up as much as half of the residents."

Metro Boston members of the creative class earn an average of $84,403 in wages, according to the article. Throughout the Boston metro area, workers in the service class earn an average of $33,738 in wages.