East Boston, MA

East Boston (“Eastie,” if you want to sound like you’ve lived here longer than a weekend) is Boston’s waterfront neighborhood with a working-city backbone and some of the best skyline views in the metro. It’s lively, tight-knit, and shaped by generations of immigrant communities, with busy strips, corner markets, and parks along the harbor. Today, East Boston has a total population of 35,863 and a median age of 34, which gives it a grown-up feel without being sleepy.

On the “how packed is it?” front, East Boston sits at 8,619 people per square mile (2010), which is Medium density on the same scale we’ve been using (5,000–12,000 = medium). For average individual income, the closest clean public metric is per capita income—and the best available Census geography that includes East Boston (a larger PUMA that also includes nearby neighborhoods) reports $96,601. That number is useful, but it isn’t Eastie-only, so treat it as a neighborhood-area estimate, not a precise zip-code bullseye.