Dear Elizabeth,your questions are good ones. With climate change, it's obvious that the world has to move away from a "bigger is better" consumption mentality. And I agree with you that a big part of this is transportation. We have to find ways as you say to encourage people to get out of their cars and use mass transit, bikes and walking to get around.Obviously it's a big world and Cambridge only has a small part on this, but every level of government has to be involved. So what should be done?It happens that the the City of Cambridge has become an innovation powerhouse. The combination of Harvard, MIT and a highly educated workforce plus a lot of entrepreneurial energy has produced a huge boom in research and startups. The world is benefitting from this, and in some ways so is our city. (For example, some of this research and some of these startups are actually aimed at addressing the problems with transportation and the environment that we both care about.) The boom is creating tons of jobs--20,000 new jobs just in the last 8 years! But this all comes at a real cost, which your note describes. The job boom is what is generating most of the traffic in the area. People are coming to work in Cambridge from all over the Boston metropolitan area, even from Rhode Island and New Hampshire, the vast majority of them by car.
If you wanted to want to keep Cambridge the same as it was say 10 or 20 or 30 years ago, you needed to start several years ago by restricting the growth of jobs in the city. Oddly, I don't see anyone trying to stop Kendall Square from building all the new labs and office buildings, much less trying to divert all the innovation and economic growth we've experienced to another city or region. Only when it comes to housing do people seem to think they can organize to keep things as they were.You and I probably feel much the same about the kind of city we want to live in. I certainly don't like the traffic jams, or all the frustrated commuters who blaze through what should be my quiet neighborhood street. Restricting the supply of housing in Cambridge won't do anything to solve the problems you cite, in fact it will make them worse. Housing prices will go up, which is great for those of us who own houses, but not so great for anyone who isn't rich or a homeowner. The rich will drive out the middle-class and even the upper-middle-class in pursuit of housing, even "fixer-uppers." Everyone else will be forced to commute in, most of them by car. Our back-streets will get more and more congested as people try to find ever more creative ways around the traffic jams that plague the main streets.The alternative that is climate friendly and that, in the longer run, can stop Cambridge from becoming a parking lot every rush hour, is to create the conditions by which people can commute using something other than a car. Every Cambridge worker who is a Cambridge resident is potentially one less commuter. A major part of that is building more housing in the city, especially around where the jobs are, and making it easier for people in the city to use subways, buses, bikes, scooters and walking to get around. I'm in favor, for example, of building more separated lanes for bicycling even though in the short run that's going to make the traffic worse, not better.If the plan is to try to restrict housing and force more and more people to commute in, how are we going to stop them from using cars? Maybe we need to build up places like Alewife and encourage commuters to get out of their cars at the city's edge. But Alewife is kind of a nightmare already during rush hour. Can we find some way to make buses and the commuter rail more attractive to commuters? Maybe some kind of congestion pricing is in order, I don't know.Seems like the more straightforward, environmentally appropriate approach is to try to move away from the suburban "commute from 30 miles away" approach and put the housing where the jobs are. Cambridge will change, there will be more density especially around the major streets, but ultimately it will be a more peaceful place, with less car traffic and more diversity, than if we try to put the drawbridge up.Best,Tom Burke11 Buena Vista ParkOn Mon, Aug 12, 2019 at 10:22 AM Elizabeth Greywolf <esgreywolf@gmail.com> wrote:Thanks for the report Tom. But I have a question: Why is it always assumed bigger is better? Nothing in nature operates that way and if we are seriously concerned with the environment we should be spending money on revamping the transportation system to eliminate the need for so many cars that we’ve reached “tipping point.”You imply if we don’t keep expanding and finding ways to cram more people into the city, that would be counter-productive. Yet the negative effects of not changing our city goals and not dealing with the car crisis is becoming more and more obvious in our air and on our streets. I do not believe that developing more housing “affordable” or otherwise, is the main answer, as people will still want cars. Our back-streets that were once peaceful, quiet places to live, have now become slowly moving car lots during rush hours, getting worse every month.
When is enough commerce enough? When is it time to take serious action to make getting around Cambridge without a car, a realistic option? THAT would be environmentally responsible, not cutting down every possible tree to make more apartments.
Elizabeth Greywolf
On Thu, Aug 8, 2019 at 2:31 PM Tom Burke <tburke@wellesley.edu> wrote:Dear Neighbors,I note that today the state department of transit released a report that says traffic congestion has reached a "tipping point" where it is now significantly affecting the economy and the quality of people's lives. The report included a listing of the five worst places and times for traffic congestion in the whole state, two of which were Route 2 eastbound in the morning. The poor folks stuck in that mess are, I assume, mostly people commuting in from the western suburbs to all those great jobs that have been created in Kendall Square and other parts of Cambridge. I suppose a few of those commuters park at Alewife but most continue in to Cambridge, causing huge amounts of congestion in our city.It's not a great system and it's getting worse. There's no one simple solution, but certainly part of it is building more housing closer to the jobs, in places like our city. Unless you have a plan for quashing the economic vitality of Cambridge and moving all the new jobs elsewhere, you have to face the fact that more and more people are going to be working here. Isn't it only fair, and also the right thing to do environmentally, to build a corresponding amount of housing in Cambridge?Tom Burke11 Buena Vista ParkOn Wed, Aug 7, 2019 at 8:41 PM Tom Burke <tburke@wellesley.edu> wrote:Dear Neighbors,I recommend this article which demystifies some of the mistaken claims made about the overlay proposal.An anti-overlay city council candidate who was canvassing the neighborhood last week evoked the image of whole blocks in Porter Square being bulldozed to make room for high-rises. I understand it's a complex issue and there are legitimate concerns, but I also think there's a tendency to overstate what the overlay would do.My family and I lived in the Bay Area from 2014-2016 and that experience vividly illustrated what happens when a purportedly progressive community finds reasons to oppose almost all new housing even as the economy booms. Racial and class diversity in places like Berkeley and Oakland is rapidly evaporating. In Silicon Valley, where they seem to have fallen in love with those squat suburban ranch houses of the 1950s, even extremely well-off people, families at the top of the income ladder, can't afford to live there.I am hopeful that this fate can be avoided in Cambridge, where it seems Nimby-ism isn't nearly as strong, and where Yimby-ism ("Yes in my backyard!") seems to be gaining some momentum.--Tom Burke11 Buena Vista ParkOn Wed, Aug 7, 2019 at 6:46 PM Ruth Ryals <rryals@comcast.net> wrote:_______________________________________________All,
We are heading into the home stretch on the hotly-debated proposed Affordable Housing Overlay.
Below are details on up-coming informational sessions put on by the city.
And go to this site for information about the city’s housing programs: https://www.cambridgema.gov/Services/applyforaffordablehousing
On the other hand, there is a new website for opponents of the AHO as written: https://www.cccoalition.org/
Also see the attachments to this email.
Ruth
From: "Cambridge Community Development Department, Housing Division" <housing@cambridgema.gov>
Reply-To: <housing@cambridgema.gov>
Date: Wednesday, August 7, 2019 at 10:44 AM
To: Ruth Ryals <rryals@comcast.net>
Subject: Upcoming Affordable Housing Information Sessions
Updates from the City of Cambridge
Affordable Housing Information Sessions
Upcoming Affordable Housing Information Sessions
Attend an upcoming affordable housing workshop! Join the Cambridge Community Development Department's Housing Division to learn about the rental and homeownership programs offered through the City.
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
Central Square Branch Library
45 Pearl Street, Lewis Room
· 1st Session at 6:00 PM
· 2nd Session at 7:00 PM
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
O'Connell Branch Library
48 Sixth Street
· 1st Session at 6:00 PM
· 2nd Session at 7:00 PM
Thursday, September 12, 2019
Cambridge Public Library, Main Branch
449 Broadway, Community Room
· 1st Session at 11:00 AM
· 2nd Session at 12:00 PM
Tuesday, September 24, 2019
Citywide Senior Center
806 Massachusetts Avenue, Ballroom
· 1st Session at 6:00 PM
· 2nd Session at 7:00 PM
Want to learn how to apply for affordable housing? Click here to view a new webpage that brings together information and FAQ’s about the City’s housing programs.
Neighbors mailing list
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--"From time to time I return to Ozu feeling a need to be calmed and restored. He is a man with a profound understanding of human nature, about which he makes no dramatic statements. We are here, we hope to be happy, we want to do well, we are locked within our aloneness, life goes on."--Roger Ebert, Review of Yasujiro Ozu's An Autumn Afternoon--_______________________________________________"From time to time I return to Ozu feeling a need to be calmed and restored. He is a man with a profound understanding of human nature, about which he makes no dramatic statements. We are here, we hope to be happy, we want to do well, we are locked within our aloneness, life goes on."--Roger Ebert, Review of Yasujiro Ozu's An Autumn Afternoon
Neighbors mailing list
Neighbors@buenavistasocialclub.org
https://lists.buenavistasocialclub.org/listinfo/neighbors
--">From time to time I return to Ozu feeling a need to be calmed and restored. He is a man with a profound understanding of human nature, about which he makes no dramatic statements. We are here, we hope to be happy, we want to do well, we are locked within our aloneness, life goes on."--Roger Ebert, Review of Yasujiro Ozu's An Autumn Afternoon
