Julian Hartman: Controversy in Cambridge — Planning Kendall Square

Abstract

Kendall Square is known around the world as an innovation hub, but despite Cambridge, MA's outsized role in the national R&D and policy scene, Kendall Square faced decades of struggle over its highest and best use. Amidst an atmosphere polarized by protests against war and urban renewal, debates over the development of Kendall Square — whether for industrial, residential, or commercial use — resonated with deep divisions over the role of university in society. These played themselves out in a multisided contest over the future of Kendall Square that divided Cambridge as well as MIT, the renowned university anchoring the district. While these debates ultimately did not affect Cambridge's status as an innovation hub, they profoundly shaped the built environment of Kendall — and not for the better. Whatever Kendall Square's successes in R&D, it also has well-known urban problems, lacking some elements commonly posited to be core features of innovation districts. In this lecture, Julian B. Hartman argues that the planning lessons to be learned from Kendall Square are not so much in the successes of the neighborhood on the level of design but from the political and financial conflicts that delayed development by over a decade and shaped the built environment. To that end, Hartman traces controversies in the 1960s and 1970s over the purpose of Kendall Square and the future of Cambridge.

Biography

Julian B. Hartman is an Active Learning Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow in the City and Regional Planning Department at AAP. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona's School of Geography, Development, and Environment in 2023. His research examines meds-and-eds urban development in the Boston region over the past seventy-five years, tracing how shifts in project financing and community relations shaped the physical development of innovation districts.