In the upcoming Cambridge City Council elections, specific policy demands of Harvard are taking a backseat, in contrast to previous cycles.

The approach of the 22 candidates running this year differs from 2013, when Harvard student Logan E. Leslie ’16 emphasized town and gown relations—those between populations affiliated and unaffiliated with local universities—in his City Council platform.

Candidates’ discussions about university relations have been overshadowed by concerns about housing and development, which have emerged as dominant themes.

Jan Devereux, who is running for her first term on the Council, said some tension between the city and universities is inevitable, but it is not greater now than it has been in the past.

“I certainly don’t think it’s a dominant issue in this campaign,” she said.

Rather than focusing on strains between universities and Cambridge, candidates view universities as one facet and player in city management and planning.

Most candidates are calling on universities to play a more active role in the community to address a range of issues. Still, few have voiced detailed demands in their platforms for how the universities, and their student populations, should be involved.

HOUSING PRESSURES

The issue of affordable housing has dominated the 2015 elections, and many candidates are considering Harvard’s relationship to Cambridge within this framework. Several have called on universities to address the impact their students have on the housing market.

Candidates said universities have failed to provide enough student housing, especially for their graduate students, which they argue has resulted in increased pressure on a housing market where demand already outstrips supply.

“Harvard and MIT have a serious obligation to mitigate their impact on the local housing market,” said Nadeem A. Mazen, an incumbent city councillor running for a second term. “But no one is holding their feet to their fire, internally or externally.”

According to Mike Connolly, who is vying for his first term on the Council, students who room together in larger groups then compete for and occupy homes that families would otherwise occupy.

“Because graduate students cannot get affordable housing through their school, they end up being forced onto the private rental market,” Connolly said.

The most recent Cambridge Town Gown Report showed that MIT and Harvard accounted for a total of 5,360 graduate students living in housing not affiliated with either university in 2014, a decrease of about 160 students compared to the year before. Reports found that off-campus housing numbers have remained fairly steady over recent years.

Even though nearly twice as many Harvard students live off-campus in Cambridge, MIT bore the brunt of the criticism from candidates.

“Harvard does a much better job than MIT housing its graduate students,” argued Marc C. McGovern, who is now serving his first term on the Council.

Similarly, incumbent councillor Leland Cheung, who attended both MIT and Harvard for his graduate studies, called on both universities, but particularly MIT, to step up in providing university-affiliated housing for students and research fellows.

“[Harvard hasn’t] done nearly what’s in their capacity to do, and they haven’t nearly helped us deal with the adverse impacts of this,” Cheung said. “MIT needs to do this even more.”

The focus away from Harvard’s impact on housing is at least partially a result of the University’s decision to expand into the Boston neighborhood of Allston.

“I’m glad that Harvard’s expansion is happening in Boston and not Cambridge,” McGovern said. “I’m glad they are expanding across the river.”

According to Harvard spokesperson Brigid O’Rourke, in recent years Harvard has made an effort to expand graduate student housing, adding 1,500 new beds. She added in a statement that the University has partnered with Cambridge to create and preserve roughly 600 units of affordable housing through projects such as the 20/20/2000 initiative.

INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL

Although town and gown relations are not a priority on the platforms of most City Council candidates, several still call on Cambridge universities to devote more of their resources to issues such as community development and education.

The request for greater commitment from students to the city is not new. Many candidates called on students to increase their involvement in civic life during the 2013 election and again this year.

“If you’re going to be here for four years or maybe longer, you should care about who is making decisions,” McGovern said. “I wish students felt more connected to the city than they do.”

For Dennis A. Benzan, the Cambridge vice mayor who is seeking reelection, Harvard students also represent an educational and intellectual resource for the city.

“Then you have some of the brightest, wealthiest students in the world coming to an institution like Harvard,” Benzan said. “They come here to get a great education, and for the most part we don\'t see them as engaged in our community as we would like.”

Benzan, along with a handful of other candidates, argued that mentorship programs are an opportunity for students to improve the community.

“We’re very lucky to have that kind of intellectual capital to share with our kids,” said candidate Minka Y. vanBeuzekom, who served on the Council from 2012 to 2013.

Mazen praised the various tutoring and after school programs already in place at MIT and Harvard.

“The universities and their administrations here have made very bold steps for the benefit of our residents,” he said. “MIT has Splash, Harvard has the Harvard Crimson Summer Youth program, which is amazing—people legitimately get a huge benefit and improve their college success chances through that program.”

Mazen also advocated that students and researchers at the universities should be more involved in the city planning processes.

“Let’s go back to the ’60s when Harvard and MIT used to do city planning because they had the best city planners in the world,” he said. “They used to help Cambridge be at the forefront of how to actually plan it for the future.”

A SUCCESS STORY

For many candidates, the recent discussions about proposals to renovate the Smith Campus Center in Harvard Square represent an example of a positive collaboration between the city and Harvard.

Earlier in the summer, members of the public voiced concerns about the plans, arguing that the construction would encroach on the public space of Forbes Plaza. The Cambridge Board of Zoning Appeal delayed approval of the construction twice over the summer in the wake of those complaints.

Despite the initial friction, Harvard and local government officials ultimately arrived at a consensus.

“In terms of Forbes Plaza, [it] was an excellent example of community planning done right,” Mazen said.

Connolly and several of his fellow candidates saw the Smith Center as a successful effort on the part of the University and Cambridge to protect an important public space.

“I think that we are an incredibly dense city that is growing at a phenomenal rate, and for these reasons, I think it is absolutely imperative that we protect our existing public open space with the greatest of care,” Connolly said. “I think Harvard’s original plan for the Holyoke Center was roundly criticized for taking away spaces that had really meant a lot to the public.”

Mariko Davidson, an urbanist and civic designer running for her first term on the Council, commended the changes made to the renovation plans.

“We have a second-floor glass level that creates that indoor space that Harvard wanted that also still preserves the outdoor space that so many of us love,” she said. “And that is an example of good urban planning and participatory design. The needs were listened to and a solution for everyone was found.”

—Aditya Agrawal, Sara A. Atske, Brandon J. Dixon, Raghu Dhara, Brittany N. Ellis, Joshua J. Florence, Laszlo B. Herwitz, Nathaniel J. Hiatt, Jesper W. Ke, Siqi Liu, William W. Maddock, Sruthi L. Muluk, M. Hanl Park, Maria H. Park, Ignacio Sabate, Luca F. Schroeder, Samuel Vasquez, and Daniel P. Wood contributed reporting to this story.

—Staff writer Sharon Yang can be reached at sharon.yang@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @sharonjyang.