Word: dpw
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...DPW opted for convenience. It acknowledged, but ignored. the serious consequences a large expressway along Brookline and Elm Streets will have for Cambridge. The highway will now run through the heart of the Central Square business district and the densely populated residential neighborhoods on either side of Mass...
...DPW, this only means that 1669 families in Cambridge and Somerville will be displaced and that businesses with 2715 jobs will be destroyed. These figures are staggering. But when the DPW compares them with the costs of the alternate Portland-Albany route -- the department's estimates put these at 656 families and 7131 jobs -- it concludes that Brookline-Elm is the best bet. The DPW's calculations are probably inflated, but on paper the decision has the semblance of rationality...
...real situation is far more complex, and the DPW's choice has more significance than the numbers suggest. The eastern end of Cambridge faces the prospect of long term industrial expansion. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is building a $60 million research laboratory next to M.I.T. The presence of the NASA complex will add to Cambridge's attractiveness as a home for electronics, engineering, and research-oriented companies. The possible influx of such firms is not an unpleasant prospect; it will mean new jobs for Cambridge and provide permanent stability for the City's tax base. But the influence...
...Inner Belt, in essence, will form a barrier to which industrial-educational developments will eventually expand. The DPW faced the following choice: it could put the Belt along Brookline-Elm, through the heart of residential and commercial districts, and allow extra growing room for the businesses who will want to be close to NASA and M.I.T.; or, it could select Portland-Albany, closer to the current boundaries of the commercial and residential areas, and permit these sectors -- in which there is both good and bad housing, prospering and shaky businesses -- to work out their own future...
...plausible case can be made for either alternative, but the DPW's decision should at least be recognized for what it is. The department says that the Inner Belt will cost Cambridge the homes of only 1235 families. This is true only in the literal sense: the bulldozers clearing a path for the highway will destroy the homes of these families. But after the Belt is constructed, the homes of the thousands of people between the Belt and the expanding area of industry will be vulnerable. The Belt will have taken away many of the reasons for remaining -- it will...