Neighborhoods and Fisheries

Datablast, February 4, 2016

Schools & neighborhoods

According to a new report from real estate firm Redfin, Boston features no neighborhoods with a combination of affordability, walkability, and good schools. While Redfin does state that Boston has a mix of economically integrated neighborhoods with high walkability scores, none of them include quality schools. Jones Hill/Upham’s Corner and Hyde Square had the highest rankings among the city’s neighborhoods, but still missed the cut. Redfin’s results are interesting and somewhat telling, though, as with most reports, one should be wary of drawing too many hard-and-fast conclusions from any single assessment of three already complicated variables (affordability, walkability, and good schools).

The North East’s Food Fish

This past week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association published a report on climate change and marine species in the journal PLOS ONE. The “multispecies assessment” is among the first of its kind. As we, at Indicators, are not experts on marine biology or oceanography, we’ll let Patrick Whittle of the Associated Press deliver the report’s key points:

“NOAA’s report assigned a ‘climate vulnerability score’ to 82 Northeastern fish and shellfish species. It listed types of scallop and quahog and the Atlantic salmon as the most vulnerable in the region, as well as eastern oysters, a $175 million fishery in 2014. Also, certain types of herring, a vital part of the ocean’s food web and commercially important as bait, were found to be highly vulnerable to climate change… Lead author Jon Hare, a NOAA oceanographer based in Rhode Island, said scientists found that most of the species they studied will be affected by climate change in some way.”