Urban Planner Makes Second Push for Office

Sam Seidel’s quiet demeanor belies his intense focus.

In 2005, the soft-spoken mid-Cambridge resident’s bid for a seat on the City Council fell short by just 90 votes. This year the Harvard-trained urban planner is back, waging another issues-based campaign similar to the one that endeared him to progressives throughout the city two years ago.

As in 2005, Seidel says he wants to marshal his professional knowledge to meet the city’s demands: lowering housing costs, slowing gentrification, and allowing the city to grow sustainably.

Though Seidel lost then, he says that the race showed that the city is ready for political change. Newcomer Craig A. Kelley gained a seat in a year when all nine incumbents were up for re-election. This time, with two seats on the council up for grabs, the race is more open than ever.

“The world has changed and we know it, and yet you watch the council, and it’s yesterday’s discussion,” Seidel says.

“People really do want some new faces on the council,” he adds.

A CANTABRIGIAN, BY WAY OF BERKELEY

Seidel, a died-in-the-wool liberal with a degree in classics from Berkeley, got his first taste of government in Washington, D.C., where he studied public policy at Georgetown and worked as an assistant to Eunice Kennedy Shriver.

He graduated from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design in 2001 with a degree in urban planning.

Seidel says he was pulled into local politics by a sense that demographic shifts had pushed the city into a new stage in its history with “a whole new set of challenges.”

“In some ways what I’ve been trying to argue through this whole campaign is that we’re actually entering a whole new era,” Seidel says, who is married with no children. “We’ve got to shake up the whole model and rearrange the pieces because we’ve got a whole new set of challenges before us.”

THE CHANGING MARKET

After Cambridge suspended rent control in 1994, property values shot skyward, prompting concerns that taxes and market pressures are pricing middle class families out of their homes.

In a market as expensive and competitive as the one in Cambridge, Seidel says the city must target residents that need help the most, such as seniors and longtime city-dwellers.

Seidel has a clear soft spot for preserving the vitality of the city’s neighborhoods. In addition to his day job, he writes a column for The Alewife, a North Cambridge and Porter Square newspaper, and serves as the president of the board of the Margaret Fuller Neighborhood House, the oldest settlement house in the United States.

Sentimentality aside, Seidel disagrees with those who think that the city can—or should—shield its residents completely from rising costs.

“Those pressures are just much greater than we’re going to be able to address through money,” he says. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to catch up. I don’t think the resources are available, even though we’ve committed a lot of them and have put our money where our mouth is.”

MANAGING TO GOVERN

Seidel criticizes many of the current councillors—some of whom have served in city government for almost two decades—for not listening to constituent concerns and or taking a sufficiently hands-on approach to management.

“I don’t think all the parts of the public conversation are as wonderful as they should be,” Seidel says. “I think the council can start to rebuild a more meaningful public dialogue through respect for people’s opinions.”

He promises that, if elected, he will better translate resident needs into policy, starting with more effective communication with Cambridge’s veteran city manager, Robert W. Healy.

Healy, who manages the day-to-day operations of the city, has held the post since the early 1980s, and Seidel worries that when Healy retires, his knowledge and experience will go with him.

“That new person is going to have a steep learning curve as they step into that role and get used to all the different things that happen in Cambridge,” Seidel says. “The council needs to know where it’s at as a body where that happens.”

TACKLING THE EVERYDAY

Seidel is not afraid to get into the nitty gritty—he’s willing to take on the neighborhood nuisance of leaf blowers, for example, and has criticized the vote that allocated staffers to city council members.

Still, the longtime environmentalist likes to think like an urban planner—about the big picture. And he hopes he can focus resident attention on more pressing issues, like development in the city.

“A leaf blower on a Saturday morning is an annoyance, [but] I think the economic challenges before us in a long-term sense are much greater,” he says.

And fitting with his background and approach to the issues, Seidel has well-formed views about development: he advocates high density construction around key areas like T stops and Mass. Ave.

As the Nov. 6 election nears, Seidel is banking on the fact that voters understand the issues and are willing to pick a quiet technocrat with two advanced degrees. He’s confident that voters understand the changes taking place in Cambridge, and that they will demand an entirely new set of answers—and people.

“I do think there is a group of people who understand what I believe is this basic shift—they have progressive values but they are not tied to the old battles of Cambridge,” Seidel says. “My hope is that these voters start to assert themselves now, because not only do I think the conversation has changed, but the underlying dynamic has changed.”

“We need a new conversation,” he adds.