The swirling rumor that Massachusetts Senate president Robert Travaglini is planning on leaving his seat for the private sector has led the press to ask Cambridge state representative Tim Toomey whether he would think about running for the vacated seat, when and if that should happen. Toomey’s statement that he would “seriously consider” the run is worth noting, given Toomey’s general inclination to avoid anything that might be mistaken for hyperbole. Whether Toomey could mount the type of campaign needed to win in the expansive (and expensive) district that corkscrews from Revere down through Cambridge into Boston is unknown, especially since this would take him outside his strong base in eastern Cambridge, a base that came through for him in 2003 when he successful fought off an organized and well-financed challenge. The financial scope of a bid to replace Travaglini would be huge.
Still, Toomey no doubt enjoys his current double perch as state legislator and vice mayor of the City of Cambridge. It gives him a capacity to deliver that few state legislators can match. One such example: The recent Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling forcing the developers of the massive Northpoint development in East Cambridge to revisit their environmental permitting has given Toomey a chance to push for an underground tunnel diverting automobiles away from the new T station that will be built. The development, described as a “city within a city”, will result in thousands of new residential units. A new tunnel pushing cars underground would create a pedestrian-oriented zone linking up the renovated Lechmere T stop and the Cambridgeside Galleria area. The original citizen complaint that led to the lawsuit was based on environmental concerns, but the traffic mitigation efforts are not. Toomey senses an opportunity to parlay a court ruling into a neighborhood amenity, and he’s reaching for it. Toomey’s success here may well depend on his intimate knowledge of the city he serves and the legislature he serves in.
Meanwhile, in Rep. Alice Wolf’s district on the other side of town, Lesley University has big plans for Porter Square, which will lead to increased pedestrian activity, foot traffic and presumably commercial activity too. The youngest sibling of the troika of post-secondary education institutions in Cambridge, Lesley often flies low on the radar screen of citizen complaint. Yet, ever since they merged with the Art Institute of Boston in 1998, Lesley has had it in mind to join the two near Lesley’s Cambridge campus. The university’s recent purchase of property along Massachusetts Avenue, just south of Porter, allows Lesley to start to plan for the new building they want there in the vacant lot just south of the church. The Cambridge Planning Board’s Town-Gown presentation outlined this well, and a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article noted that of the four T stops in Boston, two currently are named for the universities that share the neighborhood (MIT and Harvard), but a third, Lesley, is likely to be added to the Porter Square stop.
In a real way, Northpoint and Lesley are changing Cambridge, but to be honest, it’s only because they are an extension of direction the city has been going. The new people either purchasing condominiums overlooking the Charles River, or the art students arriving at the Porter T for class will be of a type: educated, well-healed, and probably civically-engaged. They will amplify these trends already underway. Our public discourse needs to acknowledge this. I do not know if our public discourse needs to embrace it either in whole or in part, but we should not pretend our emerging reality is otherwise.
What we must guard against is a (paradoxical) intolerance that may arrive with their arrival. Sometimes it is the wealthiest and even the most politically progressive communities that argue the loudest “Do not put that in my backyard!” Cities are by their very nature dynamic organisms – its what gives them their attraction and makes them ungainly at the same time.
Having said that, our politicians need to outline the vision of what this city is, or is becoming, or will be a generation from now. The new report released by U. Mass Boston gives this conversation urgency by highlighting the other side of this equation: minorities (particularly Asians and Latinos) are deeply underrepresented in city’s civic institutions although they represent an increasingly larger portion of the population. This is true whether we’re talking about the City Council, or the police department of the any of the many boards and commissions that are part of the civic life of this city. (We have previously noted the dearth of Portuguese-speaking policemen and women on the force.) As a matter of policy, we should be out in front, both on equity grounds and to acknowledge a potential build up of volatile pressure these changes represent. The integrating power of cities is their great strength, which is as true in Cambridge as it is in any other great city.
