Cambridge receives a diversity score of 98 at the BestNeighborhood.org website considering an array of factors related to diversity. This is not the kind of map that we are used to seeing for Cambridge, particularly by our Community Development Department (CDD) and some of those addressing our up-zoning plans. It is not clear how valid this map is, but what we appear to see in the above color-coded map is that certain areas are colored bright red or shades of orange meaning areas of less diversity. Notable in the northeast (upper left) is the large public housing development on the road toward the Concord traffic circle (a site previously called Rindge towers). We have several other comparable sites in Cambridge as well. This site, which purports to help future home owners to select a home site based on factors of diversity or race, enables one to zoom in on specific parts of the city. The current identity of Cambridge neighborhoods emerged in the 1950s as part of a report on our various communities within the City. This is most closely identified with 1953 report titled Thirteen Neighborhoods of the City: HERE Little, in terms of boundaries, have changed since then. While this provides a means of longer-term assessment of changes, we must also be cognizant of core differences between these neighborhood groupings in any planning and analysis based on them. Our neighborhoods do not have the same number of residents in each. Some are relatively older neighborhoods -West Cambridge, The Port, and East Cambridge among them. Others were created more recently based as a result of the Charles River dam and the availability of new areas built on landfill. Other parts of the city are also relatively new and came into the City as land from adjacent towns, often in exchange. Parts of Strawberry Hill are an example of this. In addition to these factors, some neighborhoods house large dormitories with university students (changing the 18-24 year old demographics here), other neighborhoods house large, dorm-size publicly funded -- or partially publicly-funded --housing developments which often contain larger numbers of minority residents. In short, it is important to note that the number or percentages of minority residents in a given neighborhood means "diversity" in the core sense of the term, because as with student dorms and public housing facilities, often these communities remain rather isolated from the rest of the neighborhood. This is not the case with inclusionary housing, a term referencing newer housing projects of 10 or more units, of which 20% (2 units in the case of 10 unit buildings) must be affordable (for someone making on average 80% of area median wage). The Cambridge Community Development Department (CDD) statistical report on neighborhoods in 2023 is an important one that has yet to receive much attention. As noted above, this is part of a plan to explore Form-Based zoning possibilities for the City, with separate plans for each neighborhood. Whatever the case, it is rich with information on our City and the changes which have happened here, often differentially, depending on the neighborhood. Read CDD’s 2023 Neighborhood Report: HERE Other important links to City data include: Statistical Atlas for Cambridge Ma. HERE Cambridge Room: Research Your House: HERE Cambridge Open Data Library and Map Viewers HERE An April 25, 2018 report on Cambridge Housing Policy’s Effect on Diversity that appeared in The Register Forum is also an important resource. This report written by Cecilia Barron and Isabelle Agee-Jacobson can be read HERE. This document addresses Cambridge diversity and housing historically up to 2018, addressing factors of slavery, factors of race, "urban blight," public housing, rent control, the Bio-tech industry as well as neighborhoods. One of the people interviewed for this report, Libby Gormley, notes that "A really neighborhood-oriented feel of the city is rapidly dissipating." Another person interviewed, Dennis Dottin, "... hopes that his grandchildren, who now make up the fifth generation of the Dottin family in Cambridge, will be able to experience a Cambridge similar to the one he grew up in: 'I’m just hoping the kids who grew up here can stay here, get a good job, and raise our families—just like we did.'” According to another individual interviewed for this article, "Laurence Kimbrough, a member of the School Committee who has lived in Cambridge his whole life, said of the end of rent control, 'In losing rent control, we certainly lost a good number of African American, middle-income families in the city.' Dottin added that the rate increase following rent control was damaging to the black community: “How many black families were able to pay 3,400 [dollars] for a two/three bedroom? Plus, people [were] buying houses left and right for a million dollars or more—not too many black people have that kind of money.'” Many of the same factors are in play today. Cristina Bratu et al, in a 2022 study in Science Direct on the effects of centrally located market-rate housing in a section of metropolitan Helsinki observes that “… large body of economic research argues that this is due to shortages in housing supply driven by local regulatory restrictions (e.g. Glaeser and Gyourko, 2018). Economists tend to offer a simple solution to this problem: allow for more housing construction in areas of high-demand and housing prices and rents will go down and more people will be able to move in…. As new residents move into the newly constructed units, they vacate their old units. These vacant units then get occupied by a new set of residents whose old units become vacant and so on.” Based on the factors of gentrification, displacement, Bio-tech and larger investment strategies in Cambridge, however, this kind of “moving chain” impact does not appear to be happening in Cambridge. The key focus of this specific blog, however, is the City's 2023 Neighborhood Statistical Profile Report that appears to have been written in large part as part of our multi-year up-zoning initiative, what insights on demographics and gentrification it offers, and how these may factor into an effort to bring Form-Based Design zoning to the City. Read our recent blogpost: HERE. If we look at the data in the CDD 2023 Neighborhood report on Median Family Income (1999-2021) in the above chart on the right, we see notable changes taking place in terms of Median Family Income. These reflect changes both in our commercial sphere (notably the Biotech and Infotech industries), and in demographic shifts (related to race, age and other factors). In this chart specifically, we see how MIT/Area 2 median family income increased by 150% between 1999 and 2021. Strawberry Hill, in the same period, increased its Median Family Income by 70.2%; Cambridgeport b7 85.1%, Riverside by 85.6%; North Cambridge by 65.4%; East Cambridge by 52.6%. On the other hand, West Cambridge, Neighborhood 9, and Mid-Cambridge remained relatively stable at 25.6%, 28.8%, and 37.2% respectively. These last three neighborhoods represent the lowest percentage increases in the City. While these changes are significant, we would see far larger changes if this study were to be done today, based on both the impacts of the Biotech industry, and outside land/home investments in Cambridge. These economic changes, in addition to doubling of the densities of some of our largest public housing developments, also are accompanied by demographic changes that impact adjacent neighborhoods in and near East Cambridge and North Cambridge. The 2023 Neighborhood Report by CDD provides important data on everything from housing and dwelling types to the ethno-racial backgrounds and ages of neighborhood residents. What we see on the left image taken from this 2023 report is that 38.9% of our properties are single-family homes, while the other 49.8% include duplexes, triple-deckers, and properties with 4 units. Only 2.1% of our properties are larger buildings of 28 units of more. We also learn here that only 30.7% of our housing is owner-occupied (a number that also includes condos). The renter number is more complicated because a significant number of these are local and area students. While all students are counted in the U.S. Census based on the places they are in school, many of them prefer to vote in their home communities and maintain important contacts there. In the image above on the right addresses Ethno-Racial composition and Age, we can see how much this dynamic has changed over time. Nearly all those aged 85 and older are White, and those aged 45 to 84 significantly identify as White as well, while the next largest demographic self-identify as Black. In contrast, we see that the 45-54 year old component begins to include a number of Asians, the latter population becoming especially prominent in the 20-44 year old corpus, a group that includes some undergraduates, but also an array of graduate students, post-docs, and interns, as well as members of the Biotech and Infotech workforce. Within the 0-30 year old corpus, the number of Blacks/African Americans falls precipitously. Interestingly, however, the only other significant local minority, Hispanics is particularly strong in the 20-29 year old grouping of university-affiliated groups (undergraduates and graduate students). Suggested by this is that Cambridge and area universities and commercial activities have a significant impact on the ways in which our City demographics play out. Age variables across our neighborhoods are particularly striking, and we will take up this demographic first. Our various university campuses feature prominently in this. In the above graph, we get a pretty clear sense of how basic factors such as age vary across our different neighborhoods, with our university campuses factoring significantly. The majority of MIT's campus housing is in Area 2, so it is not surprising to see that this neighborhood has virtually no seniors or children under 5 years of age. The specific data are shown below: YOUNG CHILDREN (under 5): The numbers are pretty low in most neighborhoods, especially MIT, Riverside and Baldwin with university housing, but also the Alewife-centered Cambridge Highlands. The largest numbers of young children are found in The Port, Avon Hill, West Cambridge, and Strawberry Hill. YOUNG ADULTS (18-24 year olds): Undergraduate and younger graduate student numbers are especially high around MIT. Harvard's student housing (both residence halls and dorms), on the other hand, are situated in Riverside, Baldwin, and Mid-Cambridge. Lesley university dorms are located in two neighborhoods, Baldwin and within their new Harvard Square campus, which is counted as part of Avon Hill (Neighborhood 9) by the City for this calculation. YOUNG CAREER (25-34 years olds): The 25-34 year old cohort, which includes both graduate students, post-docs, and interns at our various local area universities and hospitals, as well as young professionals in our still thriving Biotech industry, are most heavily focused in East Cambridge, and to some extent across out other neighborhoods, with the exception of West Cambridge. The latter is likely because property values have remained sizably higher here. SENIORS (65+): The neighborhood with our largest number of seniors (people 65 and over) is West Cambridge which houses double the percentage of seniors in other neighborhoods such as East Cambridge, Wellington-Harrington, the Port, Cambridgeport, Riverside, Baldwin, and Avon Hill. As we will see below, West Cambridge also is our whitest neighborhood (by far), consistent with the fact that many were able to buy homes here at a time when the market prices were low (during rent-control or soon after it ended in 1995), and/or were part of the generation that emerged before professional schools began redressing the lack of minority representation in its student body. If West Cambridge has also been especially vocal about the street direction modifications and other changes that accompanied the incorporation of bike lanes, it is likely in part because many are seniors who are car-dependent and live far from public transportation. LOCAL POLITICS, AGE, AND SINGLE-FAMILY HOME OWNERSHIP: It is not surprising that in the 2023 City Council election, candidate Joan Pickett won her seat in large part with support from the West Cambridge neighborhood area, in addition to her own neighborhood of Mid-Cambridge. It is also not surprising that Council candidates most closely aligned with the bicycling alliance did the best in places like MIT, East Cambridge, and Wellington-Harrington where 18-34 year old residents are most numerous. Note that in this same 2023 election, none of the successful candidate owned single-family homes. And, in the prior one, the sole single-family home owner was Quinton Zondervan. With the replacement of Joan Pickett as Councillor, after the latter's death, by Cathie Zusy, she became the only Councillor to be a single-family home owner. In short, despite the fact that 9.3% of our units comprise single-family homes, these interests appear not to have been a major factor in our last election. The next two graphs address race and ethnicity alongside age in our 13 neighbors: Race, Ethnicity And Age Differences across our NeighborhoodsWHITES: Here we note not only the predominance of Whites across our various neighborhoods, but especially n West Cambridge where Cambridge's oldest population is also located, and the fewest in East Cambridge, which also has a large 25-34 year old population as well as a sizable Asian/Pacific one, reflecting the important impact here of our Biotech industry and proximity to MIT. BLACKS The Port (Neighborhood 4) is where the largest numbers of our African diaspora communities have their homes. North Cambridge and Strawberry Hill where several of our public housing developments are located. ASIANS & PACIFIC ISLANDERS: This group is a growing demographic here in both our universities and Biotech industry. Not surprisingly, the neighborhoods of MIT, Alewife (Cambridge Highlands), and East Cambridge are particular standout neighborhoods for our Asian population. The fewest numbers are in West Cambridge, where our largest number of older residents and fewer homes have come up for sale in recent years. HISPANICS: This diverse group is relatively broadly found across our various neighborhoods, with Avon Hill, East Cambridge, and Strawberry Hill housing more of our non-white Spanish speaking population. MIXED/OTHER: These residents are quite broadly dispersed across our various neighborhoods, with Cambridge Highlands having the fewest in this category. Here is another visualization of the same data, highlighting the results more clearly by neighborhood grouping. Again the predominant White cohort across our various neighborhoods is clearly evident, with West Cambridge housing the largest percentage, consistent with the increased number of seniors among this cohort. East Cambridge has the smallest percentage of Whites which may complement the recent addition of the Biotech and Infotech industry here. Issues around displacement and gentrification are critical to understanding the dynamics behind racial and ethnic change in Cambridge. The City lost sizable numbers of its African American population with the end of rent control. So too with the new Biotech era and the arrival of sizable numbers of wealthier younger workers assuming positions in this industry as well as allied fields of Information-Technology and Software design we are see important demographic shifts in neighborhoods consistent with gentrification.The 2023 CDD report offers sizable evidence of this as we can see in the two charts above from this report. Between 1999 and 2021, family poverty rate went down pretty much all over Cambridge with the greatest decreases in MIT (-66%), West Cambridge (-72.4%), Strawberry Hill (117.9%), and North Cambridge (-160.5%). The fewest changes in poverty occurred in Cambridge Highlands (0%), and East Cambridge, where poverty decreased 7.1%. This can likely be accounted for by a combination of factors from state and federal funding, plus changing demographics.. Riverside (-34.7%) and the Port (-42.1%) also saw notable decreases, with gentrification probably factoring into this. The Port remains the neighborhood with a poverty grouping at 17.8% in 2021. West Cambridge remains the community with the fewest residents in poverty (0.8%), but Cambridge Highlands (2.6%), Mid-Cambridge (2.6%), Baldwin-Agassiz (3.6%) and East Cambridge at 4.9% are close runners-up. As to persons in poverty, the City of Cambridge itself has a poverty rate of 12.3% with a net change of 9.7% between 1999 and 2021.The lowest percentage is West Cambridge at 3.2%, down 40.7% between 1999 and 2021. The highest rate are MIT at 18.6% (down 53.8%), Riverside (17.8% which increased 5.9% between 1999 and 2021) and the Port (at 15.4% down 42.3% between 1999 and 2021). Neighborhood Locations of Partially or Fully-Funded Public HousingAnother factor we must take into account are the locations across the city of our various partially-, or fully-funded-public housing, developments, because these units and their residents clearly impact racial, ethnic and demographic factors in the U.S. Census reports, as much as our universities . Map source from CDD and Marc Levy, Cambridge Day 9.29.2018 enhance here with rough neighborhood boundaries. As we look at the Census Data on specific neighborhoods, it is clear that certain neighborhoods are also impacted by the number of public funded housing developments that are hosted in these communities. Some of the earliest of these were set up in the 1950s with Federal funds as part of a broader effort to convert former now empty factory areas into more usable and viable spaces. Cambridgeport, the Port, and Wellington-Harrington (Inman Square) featured prominently in these efforts, as did Riverside, North Cambridge, parts of Neighborhood 9 (Avon Hill) and Strawberry Hill. In 2025, the Baldwin area is expected to build several large developments of this sort as well. Those neighborhoods that to date have advanced relatively few of these are West Cambridge and Mid-Cambridge, but for different reasons, although both share the reality that in the early twentieth century, neither had large, vacant factory spaces that would have been viable for Federal funding. Moreover, West Cambridge properties have remained among the most expensive in the City, so neither public housing developers nor the City have been able to afford the prices required to acquire large properties and build here. An additional factor is that properties in West Cambridge do not turn over very often (possibly due to the advanced age of the area’s population), and when they have, they have been acquired for non-profit use such as by the Lincoln Institute or Lesley University. Another result of the dispersal of public housing developments in various parts of the City, is that these have sometimes led to separate, in some ways segregated communities. Once one is in a housing unit, one can apply to move to another city housing site, so over time, different ethnic and racial groupings have prioritized particular public housing developments in the city. This in turn has led to the unfortunate result that Cambridge was identified in a January 5, 2025 Boston Globe article by James Vaznis as fostering a segregated school system. The article is titled "Cambridge tried to get better racial and economic diversity among students. Now it has one of the most segregated schools in the state." The factors behind this unfortunate situation are many, including the choice by some minority parents to have their children attend schools closer to home, even if the schools do not have the same academic ranking or are seen as less successful than other schools outside their neighborhoods in the City, even though all parents can apply to have their children attend any Cambridge public schools. Some of these issues are framed even earlier with the preference ratios for individuals and families applying for Cambridge publicly-funded, or partially public-funded, housing. In addition to lower incomes, priorities are given to minorities and single parents with young children which makes good sense, although recently the City decided that in addition to the c.3,700 Cambridge residents or workers given priority for this housing, successful applicants can come from other areas in the state or around the country. Again, this may be positive, and certainly the cause is a good one, and the new availability of universal Pre-K citywide hopefully will have important long-term impacts. However, given the market forces and gentrification in play in our housing situation, this also means that some of our long-term minority and lower income residents are being forced to leave the City. That is where the issues around our growing gentrification problem emerge. Stated another way, the problem we are trying to solve is being created (and or countered by other actions we are taking with respect to housing. and the types of new housing. Gentrification
GENTRIFICATION AND UP-ZONING ISSUESThe parts of the City facing gentrification forces most severely, through demolitions, renovations, additions to buildings and/or sales to wealthier owners in our once poorer neighborhoods. In the maps below, it is important to note the size and value-distribution of homes across the City. This chart offers clues as to where the demolitions most likely are to occur to build new and larger housing. If, as proposed, only 5,000 SF larger lots will be considered for the larger developments (6 stories or more), you can see in the 5,000-5,999, 6,000-6,999, and 7,000-7,999 areas that these are most likely to have an outsize impact on Cambridge Highlands, North Cambridge, Strawberry Hill, Riverside, Cambridgeport, the Port, Inman Square and East Cambridge. We have learned of one Cambridge developer and multiple property owner who has sought to buy as many of the large residential properties as he can in order to profit from the new up-zoning. In our up-zoning plans, however, we have made no effort to protect those forced out of their homes through lease terminations or evictions. We have provided no means for them to return to the City, even if they are long-time residents. The maps below were created using AI to mine the City's online databases, looking specifically at three-family properties, especially on larger lot sizes. These images also address issues of financial cost, by differentially color-coding those of higher and lower value. To"pencil things out", developers and investors look at the bottom line when acquiring such properties. Much like the data on gentrification in the CDD 2023 report, these maps show greatest potential risk for current housing to be demolished by investors and developers particularly in areas such as North Cambridge, Strawberry Hill, Cambridgeport, the Port, Inman Square and East Cambridge (for 4000-6,900 SF properties). We have very few properties available in the 7,000-7,999 SF range, but here too, North Cambridge, East Cambridge and the Port appear most likely to be hit. In the 4,000-5,999 SF range parts of West Cambridge closer to Fresh Pond, Huron, and Coolidge Hill may be likely targets. Who Owns a Property Matters: Residential Exemptions=Owner OccupiedOne can see some of the impacts of change as well, by looking at property ownership in the City. Among other things, the two maps show how many of Cambridge's condos are NOT owner occupied, how many likely are investment properties, and why many of these are charging higher rents to recoup the investor costs. Note: Residential exemptions refers to the the properties of those residents who live in their own homes. BLUE refers to those condo properties that are owner occupied. RED refers to those condos that are NOT owner occupied. These and the previous grouping maps housing maps were created by mining the city online databases using AI. Not only does this impact rental pricing (and housing costs more generally), but it also shows how much non-owner occupied properties are found across the City. Here we are looking at condos, but much the same is happening with single-family homes and duplexes. This also should be factored in as we consider age, race, and ethnicity demographics and zoning. In part to address gentrification concerns, and related impacts, Denver, Colorado recently put a halt to their dense development plans in certain neighborhoods with largely minority populations: HERE Color MattersIn the above maps, sharp color contrasts were selected to be able to see the differences between owner occupied and non-owner occupied condos in Cambridge. Blue in this contexts was framed as a positive factor (calm), in contrast to the choice of red (suggesting danger) for the units that were not occupied by their owners and instead likely have increased rents because they are investor properties. Color serves in other ways to signal various ideas in maps. Note that the map below created by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies uses brown tones to signal increasing larger percentages of public funded or partially public-funded housing projects. It is not hard to see an implied racial factor in play. In some contexts, this is consistent some of the color coding used in reporting US Census data for Cambridge elsewhere as well. Sometimes color choices in mapping can have even more symbolic impacts, as in the first two maps below. The originals feature the predominantly white neighborhoods of Cambridge in bright red, referring here too, to ideas of danger. The two smaller red and blue maps are from the site Statistical Atlas and specifically the section on Cambridge and issues of Race and Ethnicity. It is hard to get beyond the very "redness" of the demographic attribution in these two maps, and for this reason, we chose to modify the colors towards purple to allow for a closer, and hopefully less-biased perspective. Mapping and Framing WhitesOne thing that is clear here, particularly in the Block Group perspective on the right which provides much more insight than a somewhat arbitrary neighborhood perspective is 1) Cambridge has a majority white population, but we also have significant diversity in most parts of the City. Looking at the Block group on the right, we get a sense of the impacts of corridors (Mass. Ave.) particularly from Harvard Square north to the Arlington border on demographics. But we note as well across different parts of the City, that there is considerable variety in play. What is also clear is that simplistic studies such as this that don't take into account either our increasing Asian populations or the diverse groups even within a single population such as people of African descent, or Hispanic groups, miss key elements of our demographic richness - including, for example, factors of age. The use of color to press the point on a particular issue including housing is also in play by City staff in advocating for a particular goal or agenda. One can see this clearly both on the zoning map on the lower left, and in the zoning chart on the lower right. The intent is clear, but as with the above discussion of gentrification and school segregation, will the results be what they and our residents want to see happening? The imagery in the report advanced by CDD to the Planning Board in the January 4, 2022 report included the map above where similar color coding is employed. In the end, we applaud the City for beginning this important work of creating both an important and very functional GIS system, and initiating the hard work of analyzing and evaluating our different neighborhoods. At the same time, hoping time and outside consultations will also be done in looking more deeply at some of the historical, sociological, cultural, economic, and other factors in play in the shaping of our neighborhoods as well as the city as a whole.
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