Hey, there! Log in / Register
Two councilors seek to end the oxymoron that is the phrase 'Cambridge artists'
By adamg on Wed, 05/25/2016 - 7:29am
Cambridge Day reports on an effort by two city councilors to make it a tad easier for local artists to qualify for affordable housing now that they've been priced out of the city. Other councilors, however, wondered why artists should get precedence when other people, such as teachers and firefighters, can't afford to live in Cambridge, either.
Neighborhoods:
Topics:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
So Letting Harvard Square Turn Into A Mall...
Letting Kendall look like Dallas.......
Letting Alewife have a density of some Central European walled city with a corresponding road network......
Making Central Square traffic calming look like Frogger brought to life.....
Calling for better public transportation, but standing firm against the Grand Junction line possibilities....
Now you want it to make it easier for "artists" to live in the city....
You have made it easier for artists to live in the city, only if their names are Hockney, Kostabi, Koons, and Christo.
Nice try CCC. I guess being punch drunk on tax revenue has got you melancholy on what you destroyed.
So now density is bad?
So now density is bad?
This is all so confusing.
When you place a city density on a suburban road network?
Yes.
Alewife, which in the past 50 years has gone from suburban industrial, to suburban retail, to now near urban residential / commuter belt town, has the same exact road network which cannot handle the crush of commuters. (PS - Not everyone wants to bike to their start up).
The good folks of Cambridge decided to do nothing about cars going through Alewife / Fresh Pond, except make the bridge a little wider.
You have a major highway dumping cars into two local roads that are compounded by two rotaries. Cambridge said this is Cambridge. We don't want cars yet push development without the corresponding infrastructure for those of us who may want to pass through the former Havana On The Charles back to Arlington or Lexington over roads that the entire state paid for over the years.
The rumor that my favorite Red Sox player of my youth; Fred Lynn, left for California in 1980 because his wife couldn't cope with the Fresh Pond rotaries. She might get apoplexy if she tried negotiating them today.
So we only allow density in
So we only allow density in what 10% of the greater boston area?
It is too late to change the basic road structure at this point. We have what we have and we need to live with it.
No no no
Density is just fine, as long as it's designed specifically to avoid inconveniencing John. He wants to live near the major transit hub for the northwest metro area, but doesn't want anyone to live near or drive to the train station. It's all perfectly reasonable.
You Make My Point
You acknowledge the density not having the corresponding infrastructure to support it. A secondary roadway (with cycle track) should have gone up New Street from the Concord Ave rotary towards the Soviet housing projects on Rindge Avenue to tie into Alewife Brook Parkway northbound. You would have an easier way for bikes to tie into the park network and relive traffic backing up to Brattle Street.
Have fun wasting your life in traffic when a solution is available.
Have fun being traffic
Have fun being traffic
I'm not being traffic when I
I'm not being traffic when I'm stuck in the Alewife jam on the 62 bus.
There are 3 crossing of the
There are 3 crossing of the commuter rail tracks in the nearby area and they are all major chokepoints, especially when drivers attempt to circumvent the backups by Alewife. A major thoroughfare like Rt. 2 carrying Alewife traffic and Storrow & Memorial traffic, dumping all its flow onto 1930s Fresh Pond/Alewife Brook parkway? Yeah, that doesn't work in today's world.
Actually, it sounds like John
Actually, it sounds like John wants the public officials, responsible for rubberstamping approvals for more housing, more parking, and therefore more congestion, to give a little thought to the infrastructure which is supposed to support the aforementioned population density increase.
If you're going to build a massive garage at Alewife to encourage park & drive behavior, make sure people can easily get to this garage without sitting in level F traffic for half an hour. That's all we're asking.
How does building more
How does building more housing in Cambridge lead to MORE traffic going through Alewife? People living in Cambridge are probably not commuting to Acton.
The people living in Lincoln
The people living in Lincoln and Billerica who drove to or through Alewife will continue to do so even if a giant apartment complex goes up on Fawcett Street.
Meanwhile even if some of the new Fawcett residents take public transit, others are going to drive to work in Burlington or Kendall.
Alewife has that infrastructure
It is called ... A TRANSIT STATION.
Also, at its peak Arthur D. Little had a lot more cars going into it than much of that area's office parks draw now.
Much of the new development
Much of the new development at "Alewife" is more than a 10 minute walk from a T station. And the walk is rather unpleasant.
Foot-hostile Alewife
I took the T to Alewife, for a nearby job interview, was on schedule when leaving the station on foot, but the confusion and pedestrian-hostility of the roads around there made me very late.
I just assumed, with the bike path right there, that it was all foot-friendly.
Everything you said is true,
some just want to live in their own fantasy world and deny it.
Same can be said for surrounding cities and towns, Boston included. A good example is removing the Forest Hill's overpass so that now all traffic uses surface roads. Guess what? Surface road (street traffic) is worse, no improvement or reduction, especially on Washington St. I take the 51 bus from my place in W.R. to Cleveland Circle, it normally takes 12-15 minutes. I also take it back home from Reservoir. From rush hour onwards (and our rush hours in Boston are LONG, extend well into the late evening) these buses get stuck in hideous traffic from F.H. onwards (and crossing Rt.9, but that's not nearly as bad as the situation around F.H. and Washington St.). Buses can routinely be delayed by 1/2 hr. I also take it in the opposite direction l, same thing. I also drive in the area. There are many other examples in Boston, Cambridge, etc. Obviously, A LOT of it relates to the MASSIVE influx of commuters into Boston, Cambridge, etc. Those cars, trucks, etc. aren't going to magically disappear.
lol you realize the project
lol you realize the project isn't done, right? like they didn't tear it down and leave that mess and say WELP ALL FIXED.
it's.... get this .... in process. it's a construction zone, essentially. you can't make improvements without disruptions.
if traffic is a nightmare after the whole project is done then please feel free to pat yourself on the back but the casey was an abomination and was going to fall down on somebody at some point anyway.
I didn't think it was an
I didn't think it was an abomination when I walked under it to get to the T.
It's not physically possible for it to be less difficult to cross after through traffic is routed to the surface.
FH may be worse for working
FH may be worse for working people who take the bus, but hey! at least it's better for the handful of cyclists who ranted and whined to get the overpass demolished! The few who kick and scream the most seem to get their way these days. That area is so congested now it's a disaster.
Oh, please
A) It's an active construction zone; it's hardly finished.
B) As somebody who drives through that every morning, five days a week, I haven't found it any worse than it was when the overpass was up, aside from the first week or so, when people were getting used to the traffic changes (YMMV, natch).
C) David Ferris might disagree with you that all bicyclists supported the ground-road approach.
D) Even if the state had gone with a new overpass, it still would have had to tear the old one down, which would have left the situation in May, 2016 pretty much the same.
Because cyclists don't work?
Wow. That explains all the first floor corridor space at my workplace that is wall to wall bikes!
People who don't work are riding them here and not working. Right.
Get over yourself.
Get out of your car and relax, dude
.
Teachers and firefighters are
Teachers and firefighters are better paid than a lot of people. If they can't afford Cambridge then who can? The ultra rich and ultra subsidized?
Yes
Or the people who bought houses decades ago and haven't sold.
Global Revolution!!1
I wish Mazen would focus on solving problems rather than flashy feel good proposals, self-aggrandizement and pushing his bizarro plans for REVOLUTIONARY POLITICS in Cambridge.
This guy sits around council meetings prattling on about the need for a REVOLUTION (led by him) in Cambridge.
Ummm
"Artists," AKA trustafarians, are one of the few groups who actually CAN afford to live in Cambridge and Boston without dual six figure incomes or housing subsidies.
JP
Is a prime example....
Artist housing in Boston never added up
When this program was happening through the bra the numbers didn't add up. You had to have income below 50 to get a 250k condo... The only way it worked was if you had inherited money or you were evading taxes.
Housing between Trader Joes & Whole Foods River St Open the path
There's housing between Trader Joe's and Whole Foods Market River Street. The pathway between Trader Joe's and Whole Foods could be opened behind EverSource NSTAR. Seniors need to get from Trader Joe's to Whole Foods more conveniently without having to walk around the block !
Agreed!
Not that NeverSource ever cared about such things but it would be great if this was opened as a foot/bike shortcut.
Enough with the artist grandizement already...
They are not the saviors of a city or the world, people.
On the other hand, perhaps I should take up watercolor painting seriously in order to afford an apartment in the city.
If Cambridge wants to support
If Cambridge wants to support artists, here's a good way to start:
1) Stop charging a $50 license fee, plus a half-day personal visit to the License Commission, for artistic performances. It doesn't matter how small the venue is -- if you have a 20-seat space, the fee applies. And it's per day, so if your play has 3 performances during a weekend, that's $150 out of your budget.
2) Stop charging a $40 fee for street performers. Boston and Somerville don't need to do it, so why does Cambridge impose this bureaucratic and financial hurdle? It's a particular problem for performers making brief visits from other places.
Nadeem and Leland, are you
Nadeem and Leland, are you listening? These are great ideas for the city to support the arts by no longer taxing them so much.
Middle class in general can't afford overpriced dumps
Have you seen some of the unsafe dumps that MIT graduates with years of experience crowd into with roommates?
Meanwhile, Cambridge continues to drop tons of renovated/new apartments/condos for subsidized rent , and even subsidized condo ownership, only available to low-income people. There are around a thousand units of subsidized housing in Cambridge that were nicer than what I was struggling to afford, with a roommate.
Mazen, don't forget about normal middle-class people, including MIT graduates who would like to stay and do startups here. Otherwise, you're just keeping some artists around, to raise the culture for the wealthy. Then Cambridge residents will be the wealthy, the token artists to serve the wealthy, and thousands of low-income real estate placeholder units.
Suggestion
"Artist in Residence" program, through which the wealthy provide rooms to artists at low/no cost in their own homes.
So...What's wrong with having more artists in the city?
Artists and craftspeople add a vitality all their own to cities. There definitely should be room for them in urban areas.
How to have more artists
Buy more art
Loosen rules and regulations on businesses artists work at