Word: belt
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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What happened? In December, the DPW was ready to announce a route for the Belt. It delayed a decision until March at the request of City officials. The postponement was intended to give the City time to recommend an alternative to the Brookline-Elm route--the path long favored by the DPW and long feared by the City, since it passes within several blocks of Central Square and uproots 3000 to 5000 people. Yet, in the intervening months, the Council failed to come up with another route, and the delay served only to produce more division and delusion within...
...nature of Cambridge (and most of this state's) politics. Concrete issues have always played a secondary role to personalities--as the City Council demonstrated conclusively during the first 45 days of the new year. All January and part of February, the Council completely ignored the Inner Belt and concentrated instead on a heated personal battle over the removal of City Manager John J. Curry '19. That the Council was able to forget the Belt so easily must raise questions about the depth and sincerity of its opposition...
...fact, because most political power is based on personal contact rather than clear-cut policy issues, the City has rarely attacked the Inner Belt in a systematic fashion. For years, when the highway's development was in its preliminary stages, the City did virtually nothing to create and coordinate opposition within other communities affected by the Belt. Just as important, the fact that the Inner Belt has been kicking around for so long--it was first proposed in 1948--has helped mellow opposition...
Thus unprepared (and relatively unconcerned), the City Council devoted February to deciding what to do about the Belt. It had until March 1 to recommend an alternative to Brookline-Elm. A number of problems made that task most difficult...
First, it faced conflicting technical advice. Without any real leadership, traffic consultants hired by the City and a private group of City planners, the Cambridge Committee on the Inner Belt, had wandered their individual ways. There had been little coordination, and the Council had to evaluate a set of contradictory recommendations...