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Magazine boldly proclaims: Worcester has more culture than Cambridge
By adamg on Mon, 04/13/2009 - 9:21am
It must be true. Forbes wouldn't get that wrong, would it? Who doesn't recognize that Worcester has better culture than Cambridge (or, for that matter, that Baltimore is a better place to live than Boston)?
Via Maureen Rogers, who admits: My first thought was: what were the criteria?
Clearly, availability of interesting places to shop; number of steep hills impossible to drive on during icy weather; and percentage of high school seniors who agree with the statement "I don't care where I go to college, as long as it's somewhere other than Worcester" weren't part of the statistical mix that went into this pick.
Neighborhoods:
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Comments
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Brockton is safer than Weston.
Somerville is less crowded than Barre.
Shirley has better beaches than Wellfleet.
Stamford, CT?
Stamford ranks highly. I grew up there and it was pretty unbearable. Maybe it's livable if you're fantastically wealthy. Then again the rich people always seemed to have serious drug problems (or a chimpanzee on Xanax).
I like the feel of Worcester
I like the feel of Worcester over the feel of Cambridge. Cambridge has always felt fake to me. The plastic palm tree of Massachusetts, sure it seems real from across the room but when you get up close you realize its plastic and thats why it always looks so great. Worcester is like the partially drooping tree, it doesnt look perfect from across the room but when you look at it closely it has amazing character and is alive.
Cambridge isn't just Harvard and Kendall Squares
Try Central Square, Inman Square, or the whole length of Cambridge Street if you want to see 'real'.
Been to all of them, I do
Been to all of them, I do much prefer Central Square to anything else in the city and think that Inman Square is a great square for local people.
Cambridge is highly diverse, and has a lot of substance
I'd be really curious to hear what seems fake about Cambridge.
(Other than the stealth Dunkin Donuts in Harvard Square, which is funny.)
The problem is the culture
The problem is the culture you hear about is all in Kendall, Porter and Harvard Square. Those are the places that get all the attention.
Everything about Cambridge is fake, down to their subsidized diversity that everyone seems to rave about. The home prices are through the roof so only students and the well off seem to be able to afford to live in the city and then you have the public housing to make sure people can still live there if they are not rich. What I see missing is the middle class who can not afford the condo prices or who are not poor enough to land in public housing. Take a look at the sheer number of people who work for the city and some of the job descriptions sometime, its a massive interesting list. Cambridge has proven you can create a great place to live if you just concentrate enough wealth into one city and then spend money on every social program under the sun.
Really?
Most of the music scene is in Central Square (e.g. TT the Bear's, Middle East, Cantab), as are the Central Square Theatre, YMCA Theatre, Dance Complex, and ImprovBoston. I'd call all of that 'culture'.
Thats the more real part of
Thats the more real part of Cambridge. Its also the same feeling I get in almost the whole of Worcester.
In addition to Dance Complex...
Green Street Studios is also in Central, hidden off Mass. Ave. I've seen several modern dance performances there. I also shot my first dance photography at a rehearsal there for a local choreographer (who, natch, has also taken shows to New York).
porter?
Porter? Culture? Really?? Where'd you hear that? Kendall - other than the List Center? You must be listening to the wrong people...
Tiny cluster around One Kendall Square...
Kendall Cinema, Cambridge Brewing Co., Blue Room, Emma's... Plus the occasional event at MIT.
More importantly, you can walk or T to Central, Inman, Davis, Harvard, right over the bridge to various parts of Boston...
yeah
Yeah, you're right about a few things around kendall. Most egregiously I forgot the kendall movie theater, which is my favorite in the area.
But in any case, I still wouldn't call Cambridge fake. Each neighborhood has it's own character. Harvard is super touristy, student and shopping oriented. Central is gritty and as close to a real city that exists around here. It's diverse, interesting, and full of character(s). Porter is just a strip mall with a few decent places. But where do most people live here, where's the highest density? Cambridgeport? Area 4? Inman? Are you going to call those areas fake? I don't know - this guy's complaint seems tied up with wing-nut politics.
Porter Square
has:
a well-regarded independent new-book store (Porter Square Books)
a well-regarded used-book store (McIntyre & Moore, which moved here from Davis Square)
a tiny but popular live-music club (Toad)
a cluster of Japanese businesses in the Porter Exchange building; unfortunately it appears that the building's current owner, Lesley University, doesn't value them and is evicting the grocery store
OK
I agree about the housing situation.
One of my responses is that, although the thousands of units of subsidized housing are completely artificial, and that there's not enough place for a conventional middle class, I wouldn't say Cambridge is fake.
I do think you will find a more unconventional middle class: Say, young professionals who are pulling down a middle class income, but living with roommates in student apartments while they pay off school debt and then try to save money so they can afford housing in the area if their career path works out. Or young adults with lower incomes, who also do the roommate thing, and who often contribute disproportionately to the local culture. Or a couple who elsewhere could easily afford a McMansion, but want to live in Cambridge and walk or Red Line to work, so they get a starter condo, and plan to save up and move to one of the Green Line towns when their careers and wallets can afford to have kids. There are also a lot of working families, including lots of immigrants, scattered around, with some of them in subsidized housing, and some of them not.
I wouldn't say these people are fake. Market forces are real. Cities supplementing market forces is an important and normal function of cities. Working, living within your means, and planning for the future are real.
Going back to the subsidized housing, it's an institution, and I don't fully understand it. It connects with a lot of voters, the student population doesn't vote enough, and there's a bunch of us liberals in Cambridge, so that's a huge pro-subsidized-housing bloc. Will be interesting to see how that evolves, especially as the economy likely means more and more Americans will become directly dependent on various subsidies in the near future. When times get tough, people tend to turn to blaming other groups, but it's harder to complain about someone else's handouts when you're dependent on handouts yourself.
Im not complaining about the
Im not complaining about the handouts, I just always had a hard time with government housing especially when it makes up the only lower income people in the area. I think its unfortunate that the market situation is so out of hand that people HAVE to depend on the government to house them even if they work. It seems to me like if Im living in assisted housing in an area surrounded by high rents then if I ever leave that housing Im gonna get kicked out of the city. No real incentive to move up, AND being dependent on the city for everything can not be all that good either. If your in these government sponsored communities you either follow in the path of your parents or if you want to make a better life for yourself you gotta leave Cambridge.
Agreed
It's a well-known trap with public assistance in general, in many places. I'm don't know whether or how the authority in Cambridge addresses that problem with their rental housing.
Separately, I understand one other thing Cambridge does is to arrange deals so that some low-income people can *purchase* housing at below-market rates, with some restrictions to avoid, say, flipping. I've seen this done with new condo developments, for example.
I haven't investigated the programs, so I don't really know what's good and bad about them. I don't think many Cambridge residents who are not in those programs have much of an idea about them.
Take data, rank data,
Take data, rank data, tabulate rankings. Rinse, repeat ad nauseum.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=sperling%27s+...