Central Scare? Maintaining diversity and density is better than abandoning the area out of distaste
A painted utility box on a Central Square street corner. (Photo: Marc Levy)
Twenty-five years ago, Starbucks opened a location in Central Square and caused a stir among locals who fretted about the chain’s impact on the surrounding community. Yet Central stayed eccentric throughout this period, with a vibrant music, bar and restaurant scene and durable independents such as 1369 and Andala coffeehouses. Just last month, the same Starbucks closed due to a rise in crime. This follows other recent departures of fixtures such as Rodney’s Bookstore and the People’s Republik. Is Central losing its edginess as it moves from being a little sketchy to just plain scary?
Central Square does account for most of the crime in Cambridge, and it’s been getting worse, likely driven by larger trends such as opioid addiction, housing costs and social inequality. As a longtime Cambridge resident, I’ve felt the growing unease about crime from neighbors and come across my share of syringes in the street passing through Central. But these concerns about public safety are not new, and rates are still lower than 10 or 20 years ago. In the early 2000s, I was an undergrad at MIT and remember older students warning us to be cautious in walking through Central at night. Zooming out, Cambridge also continues to be at the vanguard of national efforts to promote housing density and affordability with a combination of incentives, taxes and zoning reform.
The puzzle of Central is that for every vice, there is a corresponding virtue. Crime is high and it gets a large share of the city’s resources for data-driven policing, addiction treatment and services for the unhoused. Rents are astronomical and there is more development such as Market Central, with its 20 percent affordable housing. Starbucks and Rodney’s are closing and others are taking their place or thriving, such as Cicada Coffee Bar and Pandemonium Books & Games. And there can be mixed outcomes from well-intentioned policies: For example, higher crime from the opioid epidemic has helped motivate investment in needle exchanges, which can increase opportunities for perpetrators to prey on those suffering from addiction nearby.
In her classic on urban development, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” Jane Jacobs argued that vibrant and safe neighborhoods depend on a diversity of buildings and people – residential and commercial spaces, new and old structures, public and private venues – that lead people to bump into each other at all hours, develop attachments to an area and look out for one another over time. Central has all of these elements: homes, offices, retail, nightlife, 100-plus-year-old landmarks such as the Cambridge YMCA, public gathering places such as City Hall and of course the arteries of Massachusetts Avenue and the MBTA red line that ensure a constant blend of vehicle, bicycle and foot traffic.
Contrast this with Harvard’s ossified quaintness and Kendall’s office jumble and one could argue that Central is the most dynamic and open “square” of them all. Though it obviously benefits from Harvard and MIT’s proximity, Central doesn’t limit access to significant parts of the city like their private campuses do. Only in Central, for example, would Graffiti Alley emerge as a place for local street artists to compete for public attention and express themselves freely, including on issues such as the murder of George Floyd.
This optimistic message is easy to offer if you haven’t had an uncomfortable experience in Central in the past few years. You may be tempted (like I have been) to avoid the area if you can and stick to the more sterile but predictable feeling you get from walking through Harvard or Kendall squares. But the lesson from Jacobs and other urban experts is that diversity and density are what keep cities healthy. It is the eyes and hearts of a multitude of residents, workers, visitors and passersby who help prevent crime and keep a place such as Central feeling like a community.
Izzat Jarudi is a founder and writer who holds a doctorate in psychology from Yale University and a bachelor’s degree in brain and cognitive science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has lived in Cambridge for more than 15 years.
This post was updated Dec. 11, 2022, to say that the Market Central developments came online with 20 percent of units reserved as affordable housing.
Our family has endured all the progressive regressive changes over in particular the last 5 years.
One of which includes not visiting central scare anymore…it is a “no go” zone for our family full stop.
Gone are the days for swimming lessons at the Y (after the second incident with my children happened) We used to shop, eat etc there now we go to Arlington. Children can make an area – next time you go through the scare take a look around for the children. Terribly sad what’s happened there and quite frankly elsewhere.
The woke mind virus spreads quickly – see all the marijuana shops (the new banks) now or at the Garden street um creation.
The woke mind virus is spreading faster than Covid in Cambridge.
I think it is completely reasonable that people don’t want to be in or near a place where people are shooting up opiates in broad daylight.
You can’t force people to be in a place. The fact is the area is a haven for addicts and Cambridge is actively encouraging it.
Central Square is dead. Long live Central Square.
It doesn’t matter how often you write to the city leaders, they will not stop crime in CS.
Starting with that million dollar toilet where the only people that use it are prostitutes and drug addicts.
Face it, the police can only go by the law.
But if we can get rid of the “wet homeless shelters, we will rid CS of a lot of crime.
Central Square needs more police visibility. I go there regularly and the police do not patrol the area in my observation. Yes there is the ‘mini sub station’ but if you don’t see the people in uniform out and about then neither do those who might commit crimes. There is less police presence than there was 20 years ago.
The police in Cambridge have been MIA since the HEART program got some of their funds. While the city is turned upside down with new traffic patterns, the police are not enforcing any traffic laws at all.
Thank you for these comments. To take one from prc, I’m sorry you have had these experiences in Central Square, especially with your children.
Spending on the police and public safety have only increased in recent years (see links below), but that doesn’t necessarily translate into a feeling of safety while walking through a neighborhood. Thank you for taking the time to read my piece and share your point of view.
Best,
Izzat
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/09/28/metro/even-bostons-left-leaning-suburbs-some-police-reforms-remain-elusive-two-years-after-floyd-murder/
https://www.cambridgeday.com/2022/06/07/budget-passes-with-swiftly-outvoted-dissents-802m-outshone-by-selection-of-city-manager/
https://budget.data.cambridgema.gov/#!/year/2023/operating/0/service
Thanks Izzat. I used to love central and the diversity and the grittiness around the edges. These days clients feel uncomfortable coming to my office there, and it’s really heartbreaking that I don’t feel like I can walk my kids through the area for even the simplest of errands, like stepping over vomit in the bank vestibule earlier in the week. We’d always wanted to live over there and never found a place, now I’m grateful that central not where we settled in cambridge. City Council seems as indifferent to the human suffering there (and the impact on residents) as they are to trees in Danehy they let languish and die last summer. I hope we can get better leadership in the next election, who focus on the few dozen deaths and hundreds of overdoses and crimes rather than throwing money at underused bike lanes and vanity projects.
Eh. Too many addicts and mentally ill. I’m sympathetic to their difficulties, and those people do need help– but the plain truth is, if you let them loiter in Central Square, most other people will go elsewhere. I prefer Harvard or Kendall (anodyne though they may be).
We have addicts and the mentally ill and increased homelessness because of the high costs to exist in the city and elsewhere in the state. “If You Let Them Loiter” well that problem exists because they have no place to go. We’re actually losing shelter beds and safe daytime spaces for them to be in during winter months, as has Boston and other neighboring cities.
Harvard Sq is turning into a corporate chain store zone, I used to go there to shop or eat etc. but there’s almost nothing left to bother with there, same with Kendall.