CAMBRIDGE HAS been the scene of a bitter development civil war in recent months. A conversation about how to best reshape the city veered sharply into the ditch, and became a serious debate over whether residents should stonewall nearly all future development. Given the recent history, it’s notable that major efforts to remake Central Square and Kendall Square are moving ahead at all. But the Cambridge development plans, which were both advanced last week, really matter not for what they propose to build, but how they propose to build. Both plans hinge on giving incentives to desirable developments, and on converting stagnant parking lots into active buildings that advance broader benefits.
Last week, MIT re-launched a major bid to rezone its Kendall Square holdings, while a citizens’ task force came down strongly in favor of opening up development opportunities in Central Square. Both efforts will leverage private investments to improve shared civic spaces. And both make conscious efforts to build progressive neighborhoods that elevate people over cars.
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Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.
Speaking of open space in the city, could anyone offer an explanation of what is going on with the land just south of Harvard Ave., near the river in lower Allston? Looks like a huge parking lot for trailers. Who owns that land? I know Harvard owns much but not all. What absolutely prime real estate. It has been sitting there for decades.
It would be great if the T would run a commuter train over the BU Bridge tracks to Kendall Square (the Framingham-Worcester line). That could potentially take thousands of cars off the Cambridge streets, and reduce the need for parking in the Kendall area. The tracks are already there, so it would not require any extra building, apart from a boarding platform.
They might as well take the parking lot behind Libby's and make it into a big business building. Since they changed from parking meters to this new buy-a-stupid-ticket system, the lot is practically abandoned. The war on cars? Those bags of meat you see inside those dreaded vehicles are actually human beings, just trying to get from one place to another. Central Square has been turned from whatever it was into an outdoor mall anyway, so you might as well finish the job.
Cars are a wonderful invention and perfect for traveling at 75 miles per hour on the open road.If you need to travel to New York City, there is no better form of transportation than the modern automobile. That's what cars were really designed to do. For driving around a place like Central Square Cambridge, not so much. They're just not practical and they don't fit the job. They have very little utility in that setting and for the purpose they are being used. Wasteful and unnecessarily space-hogging, Cambridge would be better off with out them as long as there were other smaller more sensible alternatives.
Thank god that the community has not succumbed to NIMBYs and preserved the vast parking lots. As someone who lived until recently just two blocks from these lots, I can say that walking past the area is currently bleak, desolate, and out-of-place. Keeping the parking lots because of a few residents who oppose any change or are worried about, I don't know, shadows would have been incredibly stupid. Instead, introducing new vibrancy and housing to the area is the right way to go.
I am quite sure that Mr. McMorrow, however biased his reporting of events in Cambridge, did not mean to reduce the concerns of all citizens into pro- and anti-development. It may be that some citizens, especially those who favor improved public transportation, reducing the use of the private automobile, encourage the creation of walkable streets, housing the city's working population, walking to school, cleaner air, mixed housing and commercial space, improving the demographic stability, and many other civic goods, might be of the view that providing financial "incentives" to private enterprise, and entering into a competition with other towns for corporate dollar is a mug's game. It might also be illegal under Commonwealth law. So the statement that some effort to "leverage" private investments I am quite sure that Mr. McMorrow, however biased his reporting of events in Cambridge, did not mean to reduce the concerns of all citizens into pro- and anti-development. It may be that some citizens, especially those who favor improved public transportation, reducing the use of the private automobile, encourage the creation of walkable streets, housing the city's working population, walking to school, cleaner air, mixed housing and commercial space, improving the demographic stability, and many other civic goods, might be of the view that providing financial "incentives" to private enterprise, and entering into a competition with other towns for corporate dollar is a mug's game. It might also be illegal under Commonwealth law. So the suggestion that some effort to "leverage" such investment "to improve shared civic spaces" is motivated the elevation "of people over cars" and accomplished by yielding to simple greed is at least from a planning point of view counterintuitive. The facts of the heart of Central Square -- also a major hub of public transportation -- demonstrate the opposite. The Holmes Building with its Carl Barron Plaza, and diagonally across, a huge dead at night building and its Parking demonstrate the failure of such planning. The seemingly inoffensive "bio"-lab expansion for a pharmaceutical giant might be taken as an example of how building should not be built in today's urban environments. Anyone knowing the details would quickly appreciate the unproductive waste of increasing the atmospheric heat load over a electrical substation with a heat exchanger to enable doubling the deliverable electrical power, some of which will be delivered for cooling by that building's rooftop heat exchangers, instead of putting the cooling underground and delivering the heat generated by the power line to someplace -- perhaps MIT buildings that might be prepared to pay for the heat. Anyone who spends time in Central Square, knows that it is quite lively. "Bigger and livelier" sooner or later -- perhaps only when too many people are injured -- may soon become ideologically passé. Maybe even before the technologically advanced Cambridge teaches the MBTA that it is possible to get out of debt, and do a better job of running its busses and trains. A well known architect once declared "smart growth" to be an anacoluthon. But that was a long time ago. And the "extensive subway access" especially the T, has not kept up. Let's hope that the Planning Board has not been fully purchased. Elie Yarden Cambridgeport
Cambridge has serious issues with city administration: The Cambridge Redevelopment Authority with Tulimieri at the helm was totally ignored by the 'do-nothing' City Council and an incompetent City Manager.Tulimieri, the former Executive Director allegedly gave himself a $400,000, retirement payment, 11% increase in salary and operated the department without board members! NO ONE in Cambridge City administration was aware of what was going on with Tulimieri...
Thank God the Cambridge City Council members have so little authority, because they are unable to function. Case in point is their inability to agree on a search process for a replacement to Cambridge City Manager, Robert Healy. Council members have known for months Healy is leaving in 2013.
Last, week's Cambridge Chronicle announced the Assistant Cambridge City Manager will replace Healy. How convenient . . . no search... although, numerous issues with the lack of city oversight and incompetent administration. The old administration continues with no search for a 'new' city manager!