Well, if NPR says so…

I went to Hoboken once. In 1972.

A group of us Columbia grad school adventurers decided that we’d had it with life bounded by West 95th (where the Thalia Theater was located) to the South; West 120th to the North (where there was a greasy spoon where we all had burgers on Sunday); Morningside Park to the East (and we never went there; it was scary, a steep ravine); and Riverside Drive to the West (where occasionally a professor hosted his – and it was always his – students over for wine and cheese). In Hoboken, there was a fish restaurant someone had heard of – I’m guessing (thanks to Google) that it was the now-closed Clam Broth House. So we took the subway down to lower Manhattan and the PATH train to Hoboken.

And that was my one and only for Hoboken.

Back then, there was nothing to attract young folks to Hoboken, other than the desire to live dangerously and, I guess, sup on clam broth.

Oakland. I went to Oakland once. I think it was 2000. Or so.

I was on business trip in Las Vegas, with plans to meet up with my husband and his good friend who lived in Reno. But first, I had to make a side trip to San Francisco for a one hour client meeting.

Unfortunately, my plane was delayed. And delayed. And delayed

I was definitely going to miss my client meeting.

I decided to forget SF and just fly direct from Las Vegas to Reno.

Unfortunately, my bag was already checked. I could see it on the tarmac. But it was checked. And they would not give it back to me. In fact, they told me that if I went to retrieve it – I could see it, tantalizingly sitting right there – I would get arrested.

Of course, I wasn’t going to get arrested. But, really, no problem, I thought.

I’ll fly to Reno and have them forward my bag there.

But, no.

There were too many airlines involved. Too many airports.

So I had to fly to San Francisco, pick up my bag, take the shuttle to Oakland Airport, check my bag, and fly to Reno.

So, yep, I’ve been to Oakland. Or at least Oakland Airport. Once.

Back then, there was nothing to attract middle aging folks to Oakland, other than the desire to secure more affordable housing in the one neighborhood anyone would live in. I know this because I had a friend whose brother had done just that.

And then, Hoboken became a thing. A boom thing. And Oakland became a thing. A boom thing.

That kind of boom is happening now in Boston. An hour away, New England's second-largest city, Worcester, is booming. (So

"Properties are hot commercially, properties are hot residentially ... everyone just wants a piece of Worcester right now. It's crazy," said Kate McEvoy, a vice president for Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and fifth-generation Worcesterite. (Source: NPR)

(By the way, if I lived in Worcester, I’d be a fourth-gen Worcesterite. That is, if I counted my great-grandparents as Worcesterites, rather than folks who lived in the Cherry Valley section of Leicester, which is just a couple of feet outside of Worcester proper.)

Anyway, Worcester is growing faster and “is outpacing just about every other small city in America and could find itself a case study for urban growth.”

How. About. That.

The recipe, according to UMass Amherst sociology professor Brian Sargent:

"You need a larger city near a smaller city. You need the larger city to get really expensive fast, and that's Boston," Sargent said with a chuckle. "You need the smaller city to undergo underdevelopment, or a lot of times postindustrial depression. Then, as the expensive city prices people out there'll be some bleed-over from there."

I’m wondering just how a city undergoes underdevelopment. Wouldn’t it be experience? Or suffer from? But postindustrial depression?  Worcester had that down to a science.

When I was a kid, all kinds of tangible, physical things were made in Worcester. Industrial wire. Steel. Industrial abrasives. Aircraft engine parts. M-16 rifles. Space suits. Boilers. Shoes and combat boots. Pocketbooks. Boxed pizza mix. Plastic toys. Soda. Pies.

As far as I can tell, the only items on the above list still manufactured in Worcester are soda (Polar) and pies (Table Talk).

By the time my childhood was ebbing, and I was planning my escape – Table Talk Pie was not enough to hold me – Worcester was definitely in its postindustrial funk. Enter the resurrection.

The city is especially hot right now for tech, biomedical and specialty manufacturing businesses. And the types of services that come with that kind of boom. City officials have greenlighted $2.6 billion in recent construction — new housing, as well as retail and restaurant space. And Worcester is finally growing, after losing residents for much of the past century.

According to NPR, Worcester is attracting young professionals. Foodies. It has a “scene.”

All those long-abandoned pre-industrial depression factories and mills, why they’re “just waiting to be rehabbed.”

Worcester City Manager Edward Augustus, who grew up here, says that for as long as he can remember, Worcester dreamed of a return to its glory days but couldn't figure out how to get it done.

"It had sunk into the psyche of the city that it wasn't going to come back, that this was just our fate," he said. "Probably the worst thing in the world is when people start to believe it, and so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Ah, Worcester, Gritty, three-decker-clogged, messy old Worcester began clawing its way back.

Even while my mother was still alive – and she died in 2001 – all of a sudden there were a few good restaurants. A decent boutique hotel. UMass Medical School and Medical Center.

They rehabbed the train station – from where our family departed on the Great Lakes Limited for the trips to Chicago when we trained rather than drove – but for years a quasi-abandoned, pigeon-filled dump. And then they “beautified” Worcester Common, a park that sits behind Worcester’s funky old city hall.

Worcester’s psyche?

Well, even when the city’s psyche was down in the Ballard Street dumps, there has always been a booster-ism lying just beneath. And now it’s sticking it’s nose above water.

After all, Worcester is the Heart of the Commonwealth. The second largest city in the region. (Most likely the largest city in the US that no one has heard of.) And the future home of the Worcester Red Sox.

I sometimes joke about retiring to Worcester. Sounds like if that’s going to happen, I better get back there and gobble up some property.

Worcester. Boomtown. Right up there with Hoboken and Oakland.

If NPR says so…

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A nod of the Worcesterite psyche to my sister Trish, my high school classmate Franny, and my cousin-in-law Dick, who all sent this story my way.