First off your username/handle is awesome, haha. More importantly, though, I think it's important that folks engage with your perspective. You're calling attention to practical issues like parking. Sometimes pro-growth folks don't give these concerns enough credence, but even when solutions to them are presented, they can exacerbate what is the bigger issue, which is the emotional connection to a place and how it's always been in their memories. Dismissing these perspectives as NIMBYism is unproductive; it just hardens old battle lines.

If we want to avoid Rust Belt-ish decline, we need to make room for new economic growth, recognizing the reality that knowledge-based industries are going to where the workers are, which is in metro Boston, and they need housing, and this means change. Wishing that they'd go elsewhere isn't going to change that; instead, this thought pattern is truly harming folks who are just trying to make it in today's economy.

It is also true that life is more than just economic growth. A sense of place is both important to everyone's lived experience and is part of what makes locations attractive in the first place. In many cases the folks who made places great aren't participating in the industries of the newcomers. Practical concerns of longtime residents shouldn't be glossed over, and even when they are solvable, the solutions often call for jarring changes that would be disruptive for anyone.

My point is obvious: These aren't black and white issues. Solutions are likely to be compromises that leave no one fully happy, with change occurring at a definite but measured pace. We should bicker this out like the Massholes we are with this perspective in mind. Pollyanna mode over.