Week 11 (11/20)

 For this week's post, I went to Davis Square, which is right over the border from North Cambridge in Somerville. Davis and Porter Squares have been connected to Harvard Square and Boston via the Red Line since it was extended in 1984, and this seems to have caused immense social change in the area. An older woman in Davis I once picked up a table from on Craigslist remarked on all the "trendy youth" in the area, perhaps spurred by the exodus from university housing that COVID created, and how the associated rent increases were pushing her out. A hairdresser told me she used to get ridiculed for living in "Slumerville," but now considers her neighborhood to be desirable, save for the lack of street parking. 

 

Kenney Park in Davis Square, adjacent to the Community Path, photo by me

 Anecdotally, much has changed and continues to change. Another boon to development was the installation of the Somerville Community Path, a rail trail on the former Fitchburg Cutoff right of way, which opened in sections between 1985 and 2015 and is seemingly always busy with commuter and leisure traffic. It connects to rapid transit at Davis and Alewife and to many local parks along the way. An extension to East Cambridge is slated to open this year with the Green Line Extension. With service to five new stations on two different branches of the Green Line, these two projects have the potential to spur growth as much, or greater, than what was seen with the near-simultaneous opening of the Red Line extension and the Somerville Community Path. As a specifically sought-after area of the densest municipality in Massachusetts, Davis's future looks bright and well-planned.

I propose more monuments emphasizing the unity between Cambridge and Somerville as a use of participatory budgeting funds. The borders are barely perceptible and communities run over municipal lines in many places. The cities have so much in common that I've heard them referred to under the unified names Camberville or Somerbridge, so I think they should emphasize their commonalities and celebrate them publicly.

A plaque along the Cambridge/Somerville border on the Somerville Community Path, photo by me