Is a shopping mall a neighborhood? No. Is an office park a neighborhood? No again. Yet Paul McMorrow (“Hip at the Square,” Op-ed, Jan. 15) repeatedly calls Kendall Square a neighborhood when praising the commercial development that has made it a “hot spot.”
It doesn’t feel like a neighborhood. Not yet anyway. A neighborhood is a place where people live as well as work, eat, drink, and shop. Until it has more housing mixed in among its spiffy new retailers, restaurants, and corporate tenants, Kendall Square will remain largely a shopping mall or office park. A hot spot, yes. A neighborhood, no.
Comments
Fair to say..
True 'dat! and with the development in the past decade it's less a neighborhood and more office parks and buildings than it ever was.
No kidding. A few weeks back, the T got stalled at the Kendall station on a Sunday night; after about 10 minutes, I decided to get out and find another way home. I was struck by the fact that there appeared to be no busses in or out of Kendall at that hour, and the place seemed like a ghost town. If anybody lives around there, their presence is not felt. Very creepy. I hope there are plans to make it more of a mixed-use area and less of a shopping mall.