Challenger running for City Council for the first time

The candidate’s website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

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Background: Filmmaker with a focus on activism and politics | Focuses: Housing and construction; transportation; and energy and sustainability

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Q&A

Compiled by Matt Rocha

Muchnik is a film producer whose films often center on local stories, such as those on a controversial development project in Harvard Square and on life inside a youth center in Central Square. He has taught film history and production at Lesley University. He grew up in Cambridge and attended its public schools.

Housing: “I am, in principle, in favor of quality, affordable public housing. I am against 12- and 15-story buildings in Cambridge … I believe in something called midrise, gentle-density construction, and I believe we need to put the public before the developers … I will really do everything I can to stop a 12-story building next to a two-story business.”

Climate policy: “Twenty-one of the 25 most polluting buildings in Cambridge belong to MIT. And MIT has the intellectual knowledge and the scientific knowledge, ironically, to actually solve the problem of these polluting buildings. Why don’t we sit down with the R&D folks and the physical plant folks at MIT and say, ‘What’re you going to do about it.’”

Road infrastructure: “I think bike lanes are here to stay. I think they should be reinforced in certain venues. I’m not wild about what happened on Garden Street, and I believe, if my information is correct, that the bus lanes were something that was folded into the bike lane bill … I’m not sure we need bus lanes.”

Pet project: Muchnik would like to start a pilot program for electric half-sized buses that would make for nimble mass transit on crowded streets.

Participatory budgeting: 

I’d likely spend most of that $1 million on helping X number of low-income tenants make ends meet – perhaps through rent subsidies, help with groceries and utilities. 

Favorite place: Danehy Park