Groups’ rankings set climate as top priority, but forum discussion still turns to housing
Though affordable housing was the most talked-about topic at Saturday’s “How Big is Too Big” public forum, it was climate issues – the environment, trees and parks – that were identified as Cambridge’s top priority by vote of participating neighborhood groups.
Close behind, tied with seven votes each from neighborhood group, were the topics of “sustainable planning/development” (including zoning and questions of the pace and size of development) and “quality of life” (seeing some overlap with climate issues, this covered concerns over parks and open spaces, light and noise, garbage, street drugs, homelessness and a diminished arts scene).
Housing, as its own topic, was officially third tier – tied with the topics of “city responsiveness” and “neighborhoods” (referring to preservation and civic engagement issues) with five votes each. Advance publicity for the event suggested housing might be key, as organizers noted concerns about figures estimates from the citywide planning process Envision Cambridge that under current zoning there will be 20,800 more Cantabrigians by 2030, and certain zoning changes could raise that to 24,300. That bigger figure is a 21.5 percent increase over the current 113,000 population, and its 12,300 residential units added to the current 44,000 is growth of 28 percent.
Also participating were citywide organizations focused on housing, including A Better Cambridge, which circulated a pamphlet about the city’s “Affordable Housing Zoning Overlay” with data about equitable distribution of affordable housing units throughout the neighborhoods. The Port has the highest amount of the city’s affordable housing units at 34.5 percent, the group noted, while West Cambridge has the least at 1.3 percent
Update on Jan. 25, 2019: Participation from The Port and Wellington-Harrington was provided by residents of the neighborhoods, but not by formal groups representing those neighborhoods. In these cases, contributed opinions and votes were contributed by as few as two residents in each neighborhood, rather than by the Port/Area 4 Neighborhood Coalition or Wellington Harrington Neighborhood Association.
The two-hour forum, held at the Citywide Senior Center across from City Hall, drew upward of 150 people – including five city councillors – as drawn together by the the Livable Cambridge discussion group and organizers shared with the Harvard Square Neighborhood Association, including Suzanne Preston Blier. Ahead of the forum, Blier said its key moments would be when participating groups presented three to four issues each considers vital for a more livable Cambridge, which could be used to prioritize politically.
“We all share many of the same concerns,” Blier said, “and we believe that by working together not only will our citizens have a stronger voice, but Cambridge itself will be stronger.”
Big event
The forum was laid out job-fair fashion, with neighborhood associations hosting tables with fliers boosting causes – groups from the Cambridge Highlands and East Cambridge, for instance, served up a stark flier opposing a proposed Eversource power substation at Fulkerson Street. Refreshments were close by.
The meeting kicked off with HSNA member Nicola A. Williams speaking briefly to the desire for socioeconomic, ethnic, cultural and age diversity in the city and asking all to join her in the mantra that “all opinions are valued” and a reminder to “respect differences.” Blier, a preservation activist and architectural historian, ran through a slideshow illuminating the surveyed goals for a “Livable Cambridge” from the approximately dozen neighborhood associations in attendance. Affordability, sustainability and the need for more green open space were highlights.
About an hour in, representatives from the neighborhood associations were summoned to talk about their organizations and goals; the Cambridgeport Neighborhood Association seized the opportunity to announce that its Thursday meeting would discuss congestion and noise from the Boston University Bridge rotary, which worsened with completion of the Commonwealth Avenue Bridge project in August.
A brief audience Q&A focused on affordability, inclusion and high rents, residential and commercial, with the tripling of rent that shuttered Crema Cafe in Harvard Square still a raw wound.“Development can’t be market driven,” speakers said several times. Transportation was another major topic of conversation; trees and the diminishing tree canopy – the top polled priority of the neighborhood groups – registered a distant third in the conversation.
Not quite the end
Comedian and former candidate for lieutenant governor Jimmy Tingle spoke to close the event, and people filed out abuzz, with some wondering what had been accomplished. (Organizers referred to the Saturday forum as “setting the table for more interaction and discussion.”)
The event’s meaning remained somewhat open to interpretation. In a follow-up discussion online Sunday, Blier underlined that there was “a big message [in] this input and insight from current residents in our different neighborhoods” – but where some heard a conversation still dominated by the need for affordable housing that suggests the need for more development, she saw an answer to “the city … moving willy-nilly in the Envision effort to upzone to add more and higher developments for commerce and for housing.”
“Note climate and overdevelopment are at the top,” she said, pointing to the formal tallies of issues from neighborhood groups.
This post was updated Jan. 13, 2019, to correct the date of a Cambridgeport Neighborhood Association meeting.
Turnout at the event was great. I do have a concern about the tally of priorities.
I live in the Port/Area 4, and want to clarify that the priorities submitted were from two residents who are not part of any organization. I have been involved in the Port/Area 4 Neighborhood Coalition for decades. However the Coalition is not currently active, due to leadership turnover.
The same is true for the priorities submitted from Wellington-Harrington; they were the thoughts of two individuals, not a neighborhood group.
While I appreciate that the event organizers wanted to be inclusive, I do not think including the thoughts of a small number of people accurately represent a neighborhood. If the tally is going to be used to guide future work, it should be re-calculated.
Lastly, I think the Cambridgeport meeting is this Thursday, not this Monday.
That Thursday date has been fixed. Thank you, Lee.
The significant neighborhood groups’ Saturday gathering at Senior Center in Cambridge demonstrated once again, the arbitrary nature of stating what I see as political goals by good spokespersons, rather than the reality of public will or democratic processes. Thanks to the city for having Participatory Budgeting surveys and votes!! And thanks to Mr. Teague for pointing out what majority of engaged citizens want as a result of nearly 8000 taking the survey.
I have Attended many city Envisioning meetings throughout the last 3 years which have accomplished the same result of false choice and maneuvered priorities in the Climate Committee, Environmental Working Group, and Envisioning Advisory. Towards the end of this process, We are heavily forced to deal with more “inclusionary zoning” as the goal of increasing affordable housing. But the public will has given significant push back, because despite opinions of a ‘dumb’ public, many know what the climate future holds for us if we are not prepared with excellent Adaptation stratgies. Lots everwhere to read about climate change now wreaking havoc throughout the world.
Issues of development impacts regarding environmental abuse have been publicly laid out very well in Cambridge when the Envisioning process started, and we’ve lost sight of them as well as the “Climate Safety Petition”, which is stalled in city bureaucracy, or worse.
Plant canopy facts were well noted by around 20 testimonies at the Wed. 9th Hearing on Tree Canopy and great need to pass an enforceable tree ordinance which has little ‘teeth’ right now. Councilor Mallon’s skepticism
and Siddiqui’s silence may bode poorly for the upcoming Council vote for tree protection which is deeply a part of climate change protections.
Most progressive cities in USA have enforceable permit requirements for cutting trees ‘willy nilly’, not just for climate purposes, but for neighbors concerns about the livability of their neighborhoods. All over the US, neighborhoods are standing up for their communities and refusing to allow these crimes, now that we know scientifically how valuable our trees are for sequestering carbon, cooling and bringing storm water into the ground to prevent flooding, but recharge ground water needed for the future.
A travesty that climate was hardly mentioned at the extraordinary large gathering, thanks to seeing the need to gather by Suzanne Blier of Harvard Square Neighborhood Association, for trying to summarize many neighborhood groups’ priorities, but little being said about the environment and importance of climate ecology in our increasingly climate-hazard lives.
Appreciating the thoughtful ‘push back’ by residents throughout the city to read us correctly and to tell the truth of our choices and concerns.
Green Cambridge’s last electoral FORUM run by Derrick Jackson and Steve Nutter before the elections showed climate change is #1 as well.
“Open Space” is not climate change, but may point to parks, playgrounds, and Climate is often not a part of the dialogue when it comes to funding.
Someone is misleading us. Thanks to Cambridge Day for following these events closely.
Upfront, know that I did not attend, but after 45 years of meetings to set priorities, another meeting attended almost exclusively by old and older white people did not seem relevant or meaningful. To suggest that the turnout was great, considering the demographics, seems to miss the point of how and who should set priorities. This meeting represented who came to the meeting and nothing more.
East Cambridge
The assignment was to come up with 3 bullets for our neighborhood concerns. If you look at the East Cambridge slide presented, we have 5 bullets and did mention retail, parks and traffic safety. We do have issues with Envision, parks, trees, city responsiveness, and preserving ground floor retail. I just wanted to make it clear that even thought ECPT didn’t have a vote in a box, doesn’t mean it is not a concern. But, when Eversource told us last week that East Cambridge reached 98% capacity on our power grid this past August, no new power will be coming in for at least 2 years, new large buildings are coming online this summer, and several are under construction, development impact becomes a top priority!
Thanks,
Chuck Hinds
President
East Cambridge Planning Team
Thank you Cambridge Day for coming to this event and publishing this article on it. To Lee’s point on the Port (Area 4). You are correct, but we tried none-the-less to get some voices from this area, Happily Nicola and Lee are going to be working together to try to get that neighborhood group active again. We also want to get other neighborhood groups as active as possible. And as Nicola brilliantly noted at the beginning, all of us neighborhood group leaders need to work to bring more voices – minorities and younger residents – among these into our organizations and leadership structures. The onus is on US to do this. And the onus is on the city and our elective representatives to stop trying to pit one neighborhood against the other. We (the city’s citizens, the residents of our various neighborhoods) are all in this together. There is not ONE SIZE FITS ALL, but we share many goals together. Some of us are home owners; some of us are renters; some of us were born here; others moved here from the outside; some of us are people of relative means; others are not. But we all care about this city and want the city to listen to our concerns and interests in building a stronger, smarter, Cambridge.
The photo of attendees is quite disparate compared to Cambridge resident demographics. I also note that ABC did not vote for any of the priorities set by the event organizers. Speaks volumes about the event organizer priorities. Unsurprisingly, the disproportionately older, property owner, and white demographic have found their piece of heaven in Cambridge.
More trees, less density, more open space, and less poor people is the priority. Let me feign surprise when Cambridge real estate property values double in 10 years. Glad I bought a home in Cambridge 3 years ago; Cambridge will go down the path of Palo Alto real estate prices given these priorities. Palo Alto has great quality of life and open space. The median home price is also $3.2 million at $1,500 a square foot.
Peace Be Unto You,
All this this so-called citizen run community forum produced was how it was unconcern about poverty housing. This was another example and dose, of local economic apartheid being manifested here in Cambridge against the poorest segment of the community. Judging from the voting, it was plain to see that the common status quo doesn’t give a dam about poverty housing issues. Poverty housing (homelessness,etc.) should be the highest planning priority in every municipality. But here in Cambridge, the poor are continuously being excluded in every which a way and fashion, at these pseudo community gathering. Shame on you all.
Yours In Peace,
Hasson Rashid