To the existing pressures are added the probability of the Inner Belt's taking more than 1200 housing units and the possibility of business or commercial expansion around NASA and M.I.T. It was the combination of these forces that led the planners to propose a model cities project for 268 acres in East Cambridge. The City's proposal perceived the problem this way:

Too often, there is a tendency to view the low-income neighborhood as expendable... One chief thrust of the Cambridge proposal is to confront that issue directly, and to test many techniques for preserving a low-income area for its residents and for injecting new and valuable resources into its way of life.

There is no guarantee that Cambridge will have its model cities application approved, and even if it does, there is less certainty that the techniques proposed in the application will work. Though there is also no certainty in the predictions that the low-income residents in Eastern Cambridge will become increasing beleagured (and many of them slowly replaced), the hypothesis has become the Conventional Wisdom.

Whatever happens, it is clear that the City's housing situation is changing in more ways than one. The demand for housing is causing a great deal of new construction and promises to cause more. A drive along Harvard St. reveals a string of new apartment buildings -- all built since 1960. Harvard and M.I.T. have constructed substantial quantities of married student housing; Peabody Terrace contains 500 units, and M.I.T. has one 200-unit house in operation and is now completing another one.

The new apartments are increasing the housing supply (though gains will be wiped out or nullified at least temporarily by the construction of the Inner Belt) and supporting a new segment of the City's population. A large part of this population is indeed transient -- students, young workers who settle for only a few years and change their apartments annually, and a variety of hangers-on. But no one is very sure -- and probably won't be until 1970, if then -- how much of the new population is not transient.

High Prices

Young professionals are, everyone concedes, coming into the City, but there is no information on how stable, how rich, or how large a group this is. In addition, the City is drawing more well-established residents. Land prices in the Brattle St. neighborhood have skyrocketed, and many homes are selling in the $50,000 to $100,000 bracket. Some people have done substantial remodeling to make less attractive homes "livable." The demand for deluxe accomodations has also made it profitable to build large, expensive apartments, and the new tower at 1010 Memorial Drive may be the first of many. There are other responses to the demand for high quality housing: on Chauncy St. town houses are being constructed and offered for a cool $60,000 each.

End of the Old City

All this has potential significance beyond the housing market. The traditional Cambridge is pictured as a city of separate, tightly-knit communities remaining from that time that the city absorbed large numbers of immigrants. The national groups stuck together closely, although time and affluence have weakened the bonds as affluent sons and daughters moved up and away. But these communities have persisted in modified form. A drive along Cambridge St. cast from Harvard Square reveals only a superficial reminder of this continuity: a long string of small stores and shops geared almost exclusively to the needs of local neighborhoods.

Current trends seem to be hastening the demise of these communities. The Inner Belt, for example, will take a heavy toll in some areas. It will also have a big impact on low-income families: preliminary figures from the Cambridge Planning oBard show that 58 per cent of the families in the path of the highway earn under $6000 a year while about half of the single persons living along the route have an annual income of less than $3000. The forces of the housing market seem to be having a similar effect -- pushing the poor out of their neighborhood.

Growing Middle Class

The trend, over the long run, seems to be for a growing middle-class population. This slow shift is more significant than it appears. Cambridge traditionally has been pictured not only as a city of neighborhoods (Brattle St. being the Harvard-oriented community with Harvard Square as its shopping center), but also as a city split between rich and poor. It was the Yankees vs. the Irish, or, in a more sophisticated version, the Aristocrats vs. the Immigrants.

The stigma of the earlier conflict remains, but the City is no longer strictly divided. In the winter of 1966, for example, the Cambridge City Council spawned a feud which dug deep into the City's political traditions and demonstrated that the old forces had lost much of their strength. The conventional political alignment had always pitted councillors endorsed by the Cambridge Civic Association (a "good government" organization) against so-called independents, the non-endorsed councillors.

For years now, this sharp division has only been strictly maintained on a few of the most conspicuous issues. In 1966, the CAA-independent division disappeared completely. Both groups split down the middle, and a coalition of three independents and two CAA-endorsed councillors appointed a new city manager. Although personal feuds counted a great deal in this fight, the fact remained that the old political animosities had weakened enough to permit councillors from each group to join the new alliance. In public, they united in what amounted to a plea to shake the cobwebs from the city administration and "solve" the city's "problems."

There is no assurance that the new group will survive the November election. Nor is their any certainty that their defeat will mean a return to the politics of the past. Nothing seems predictable today for the City's politicians. Traditional politics were based on a councillor's personality and his availability to his constituents for advice, favors, or more camraderie; issues in City elections have usually been non-existent. Many of the councillors in the new coalition grew up in this kind of politics and still act as if things had not changed. Yet, in taking their radical departure, they have also introduced a new form of politics--more issue-oriented, with a commtiment to public programs and demonstrable "progress."