The Inner Belt in a Model City

The selection of Cambridge as one of the 63 cities across the nation to receive massive federal aid under the Model Cities Program could mark the beginning of exciting and constructive neighborhood development here. The City's application for these funds, which was drawn up under the direction of Justin Gray, assistant to the City Manager for community development, is privately spoken of by Washington officials as the best in the country. This may explain why Cambridge was selected over needier cities like Fall River and New Bedford.

The target area of the grant will be a 268-acre region north of Central Square, described in the City's application as having "substandard housing, pockets of blight, overcrowding and mixed land use, and inadequate facilities." Using the facilities of Harvard and M.I.T., and relying heavily on the judgments of residents in the affected area, the program will attempt to achieve long range stability for the neighborhood. Local residents will elect a majority of the members of the agency which will supervise planning under the grant, and they will be able to vote on any final proposals in a referendum.

The problem is that the eight-lane Inner Belt highway, as it is now planned, will cut right through this neighborhood, uprooting 1265 families as it goes. Plans for the Inner Belt are, as Gray says, antagonistic to the Model Cities goal of preserving neighborhoods.

Rep. John J. Toomey (D-Camb.) and Sen. Francis X. McCann (D-Camb.) said over the weekend that the conflicts between the Inner Belt and the Model Cities grant indicate that the right hand of the federal government does not know what the left is doing. They concluded that the Model Cities grant "apparently spells the finish of the current Brookline-Elm Street route for the Inner Belt.

Their conclusion, unfortunately, is probably premature. The city's proposal for Model Cities funds did not consider the Inner Belt and the grant mutually exclusive. Lowell K. Bridwell, Federal Roads Commissioner said yesterday that the Grant "might even enhance" the city's ability to face problems created by the highway.

But one is forced to ask why the Model Cities grant should be put in the position of helping the city face a situation which is intolerable in its own right. In addition to the 1265 families displaced by the Belt, over 2700 jobs will be destroyed. The industrial expansion expected around the NASA site in Kendall Square will put a further freeze on those families which choose to remain. Planned twenty years ago, the Inner Belt is now of questionable necessity. The Boston extension of the Massachusetts Turnpike has taken much of the pressure of the Central Artery. Boston has not grown as fast, in terms of jobs or population, as had been expected when the Belt was designed. Moreover, balancing the lives and livelihood of this many people against the convenience of commuters, is a dubious proposition.

The whole point of the Model Cities program is to preserve the kind of neighborhood the Inner Belt will destroy. The Belt is currently undergoing a major reassessment. If it is allowed to go through along its present Brookline-Elm St. route, with all of the disruption of families which that will entail, the Model Cities program could be reduced to a mere patching operation. The Model Cities grant provides yet another argument in the overwhelming case against the Inner Belt and its Brookline-Elm St. route.