Below is a discussion of perhaps a sub-division of Neighborhood Nine.
The discussion is completely theoretical at this time; however, it is widely recognized that N9 is too big, made up of too many dissimilar neighborhoods, to be effectual in advancing any of our interests with the city.
Ruth

From: Margot Welch 
Date: Thursday, July 14, 2016 at 8:16 AM
To: Alan Harwood 
Subject: Fwd: Voice of the (Agassiz) Community - organizational meeting

from Ruth Ryals to all of us considering neighborhoods — for those interested in geography and …community (one way to frame this).

m

Sorry if this message is a dupe, 
Peter pointed out that I responded to the wrong email trail. Below is the correct one.
He also suggested I propose another boundary option.  I will do that, but for now, let me say this side of Upland and the households on Buena Vista, Mt. Pleasant, and Vincent identify more with Mass Ave than Huron Village and Concord.  Personally, I am just two blocks from Mass Ave, which I consider my community center.
And Porter Square Neighbors Association is not a Cambridge neighborhood entity in the same way.  It exists to provide a place for the Cambridge neighborhoods, Davis Square and other parts of Somerville radiating out from the shopping center to meet and discuss issues affecting them all.
Ruth
**********************

Peter, All,
Good points, and thanks for putting them out there. 
However, I live outside the boundary (wrong side of Upland Rd.) that you have suggested, as do roughly half of the 110+ folks on my neigborhood email list (the other half are in Avon Hill).  In fact, Margot and I coordinate our email lists and probably cover 2/3 of the outreach numbers for Agassiz.  That does not count the email outreach for the Democratic Ward 10 committee, of which I am co-chair, which includes all of N9 I believe.
So, as a long time member of the Mass Ave Improvement Committee and an N9 spokesman for years now, I suggest we collectively think a little bit more about the proposed boundaries.
Ruth
__________________
Ruth Ryals
115 Upland Rd.
Cambridge, MA 02140
617-547-6453
617-834-4007 (c)

From: Peter Kroon
Date: Wednesday, July 13, 2016 at 9:49 AM
To: Susana Segat 
Cc: Ron Axelrod, Dennis Carlone, Frank Kramer, Ruth Ryals, Margot Welch 
Subject: Voice of the (Agassiz) Community - organizational meeting

Susana -

Interesting Agassiz meeting last night.  Thanks for organizing it.  Some thoughts:

1.  N8 is fairly tightly defined.  It extends from Roseland to the North down to Everett in the south (seven blocks) and east only two to five blocks to Beacon.  So maybe 22 square blocks.  Your density of homes is fairly high but you have hardly any large apartment buildings.  You have a home base in the Maud Morgan Center with overflow facilities at Baldwin School.  You have a staff person in Phoebe and a one-way distribution list-serv that reaches approximately 300 people (unaudited).  You have at least one pending issue (Sacramento garden plots) that is galvanizing lots of people (though maybe no consensus is possible).  You have a good number of community leaders.  I will be very interested to learn how many registered voters are included in your district.

2.  N9 is unworkable in my opinion.  Too big.  Even a sub-section on the west side of Mass Av could be unwieldy.  From Upland (one extra block to the north) down to Chauncy (one extra block to the south) is nine blocks.  Extended west to a natural boundary of Concord / Raymond (about six blocks) it would still be relatively huge - over 2x the size of Agassiz.  I surmise that people on Walnut Av do not feel connected to say the issues of Langdon St.  There is no other natural north south boundary, but we could, to mirror N8, draw an arbitrary line say four blocks west of Mass Av. (as the Basement Overlay District does).  For lack of a better name we could call this MAPOCO West.  Or maybe Agassiz West.  We have no pending issues galvanizing us.  Our lot sizes are slightly larger but we have several large apartment and condo buildings, some of whose inhabitants are students uninterested in the neighborhood.  While we meet from time to time at the Graham & Parks School auditorium and cafeteria, that is more than four blocks west of Mass Av.  We might be able to use a conference room at Invivia, or Coldwell Banker, or Bentley Publishers.  We don't have any staff.  We have a limited neighborhood list serv that reaches around 300 (unaudited) people in six square blocks and a private email distribution list that reaches around 60 people in Avon Hill.  We have a similar number of thoughtful, practical, committed community leaders.  We have a list of registered voters but have not counted how many are in our district.

3.  Issues we may have in common:

Individual development proposals on Mass Av.
Zoning changes that might be foisted on us if we don't speak up via Envision Cambridge
Speeding, inappropriate traffic
Bicycle/pedestrian safety
Garbage trucks - noise, speeding, too early
Telephone pole-top wifi routers - impact of fan noise on residential neighbors
Health of the existing retail sector, and how to attract needed/desired services
Beautification
Trees
Parking - fear of congestion as a result of bump-outs, potential over-development or zoning change on Mass Av.
Litter 
Restaurants - impact of noise, smells, garbage removal, etc. on residential neighbors
Comprehensive interactive combined neighborhood list-serv 
Community gardening (we don't have any)
Public transportation

I've taken the liberty of copying this email to some folks west of Mass Av. that have spoken at Planning Board or City Council meetings recently and/or that otherwise are active and that should be invited if we were to have a similar organizational meeting on our side of Mass Av. to gather input for the Envision Cambridge process and other efforts.

Thoughts anyone?