The People

Like a surgeon replacing an ulcerated stomach with an artificial one, the Inner Belt must extract much from the entrails of Cambridge before it can effect a cure. In the course of the experiment, people, business, and the city will suffer heavily, with the possibility ever present that the scheme might fail.

The work of bulldozers and steam shovels will mean a substantial reduction in the city's tax base. Estimates on the size of this surgery range from $181,000 for the Lee Street route to $372,000 for Brookline Street and $376,000 for River Street-Elm Street. On the Brookline plan alone, engineers expect to demolish about 40 factory buildings.

Whatever route it may take, the proponents of the Belt argue (quite feasibly) that the road will more than compensate Cambridge for the financial blood-letting. While removing the heavy trucking now present in many residential areas of the city, the highway would at the same time provide access to a through route for traffic from the mills in east Cambridge. Along with the three major urban renewal projects now in the drawing board stage, it would theoretically improve both residential and industrial land values, as well as commerce.

Since this argument offers the prospect of financial increase in the future, it is accepted, though often grudgingly, by those holding the purse strings, both public and private, in Cambridge. It is the residents of the area who will be affected most. In the district that the road will affect, as in the city generally, the population is becoming more static--mostly middle-aged and elderly people. With more attractive residential areas and greater business opportunities elsewhere, the youth of the city is in flight. It is hoped that the new community emerging from the rubble of the Belt Route construction will help attract this younger group back to the area. Unfortunately, the older residents will have to bear the brunt of change. There is no indication yet that the state will help in any way to ease the pains involved.

When the Redevelopment Authority demolishes houses in a renewal area, the administrators try carefully to relocate displaced families in quarters which satisfy all concerned. As John E. Connolly, executive director of the Authority, recently told the City Council, "There is no wholesale mass exodus at one time in any of these project areas. We would hope that before we brought a plan to the council (for approval), we would talk over changes with the people, ask them for suggestions, and try to incorporate them in the plan, if feasible." Apart from having a strong voice in the selection of their future homes, the dislocated families are also eligible for aid from several agencies in the form of mortgages and longterm loans.

In constructing a road, the situation is quite different. Although state assessors offer home owners a fair price for their houses, no agency exists to provide for the relocation of families, as in a renewal project. Families not owning the houses they live in thus receive no funds at all to facilitate a move elsewhere. Perhaps just as important, where the Redevelopment Authority tries to take account of the communal solidarity of neighborhood groupings by attempting to piece them back together after the demolition, highway builders have little care for the social implications of their work.

Although the threat of the steam shovels has hung over the heads of people in the area for a long time, some continue to think that red tape will enmesh the Inner Belt so long that it will ultimately fail to materialize. Like Mrs. Charles Brumis, a 25-year resident of the neighborhood threatened by the Brookline Street route, they are passively against the road. "We would oppose it, because we would hate to lose our home. But, they cancelled it for two years, so we decided to paint our house." More outspoken is Robert Pleet, who recently added a new grey and white front to his house: "I am strictly against it. If it goes through, it won't be for a number of years. Anyway, they've been pushing it around so long it will probably die."

Almost everyone will grant that the Inner Belt means progress, at least in terms of improving the Metropolitan highway situation. At this point the questions seem to be: does the road mean the substantial improvement for Cambridge which its apologists predict? Does this improvement depend upon both the renewal projects and the road, or just upon the renewal projects alone?

(This is the second of three articles on the Belt Route.)