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Friday, March 29, 2024

Kendall Square’s 134 Main St., circa 1880. (Image: Cambridge Historical Commission)

Biotech has helped transform Kendall Square into what’s been called “the most innovative square mile on the planet” – but, well, why? Why here and not somewhere else? And what’s next?

The Cambridge Historical Society asks these question at two free events in October, starting with Monday’s “Why Here?” and finishing Oct. 18 with a look at what the square means to the city now, how the science and residents interact, “what we’re proud of and what we fear, what we see and what remains invisible” and how the square will and should develop.

“An important objective of the Cambridge Historical Society is to help our community explore how and why we arrived at our present state and use that perspective to facilitate discussion of contemporary issues that will have an impact on our future,” said Marieke Van Damme, the society’s executive director.

bullet-gray-small Part 1 (“Why Here?”) is from 6 to 8 p.m. Monday at the Cambridge Main Library, 449 Broadway, Mid-Cambridge, with speakers Sam Lipson, the city’s director of environmental health; Robin Wolfe Scheffler, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology historian; and Phillip Sharp, of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. It’s moderated by former mayor Henrietta Davis.

bullet-gray-small Part 2 “What’s Next?” is from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Oct. 18 at Google Cambridge, 355 Main St., Kendall Square, with speakers David Sun Kong, of the MIT Media Lab; Abbie Celniker, a Partner at Third Rock Ventures; and Debra Morris, President of the Newtowne Court-Washington Elms Tenant Council. The moderator is Mimi Graney, a neighborhood economic development advocate who founded Somerville’s What the Fluff? Festival.

If last year’s civic engagement symposia on “Housing for All?” is any example, the two-part look at Kendall Square will be edifying; it received the 2017 Award of Merit in September from the American Association for State and Local History.

For information, call (617) 547.4252  or send email to [email protected].


This post was written from a press release.