I’m going to try starry internet. Anyone try?

Which honestly I would say is a fantastic question, but I'm a firm believer in state-funded competition in privatized markets.

If a government can do it better and cheaper than capitalism, then it should become a public service.

It’s dreary because they are all office buildings. These are residential towers

Summerville said "excuse me?"

I like that this isn't even the dumbest idea on this sub.

At this point shouldn't OP be asking why the state isn't doing it then??

The city could probably get much more housing by allowing 4-6 family development by right instead of allowing the rich of Brattle to cut off their neighborhood with exclusionary zoning. North Cam is almost exclusively zoned for only 2 family despite being right next to alewife and Davis and porter

In general I support any free market solution to housing, but sky scraper housing adds a lot of people without many businesses

Cambridge, home to MIT and many of the worlds top technology companies, can't even figure out how to provide municipal broadband.

I mean it's not just Cambridge obviously, but Boston-Newton-Cambridge has a GDP of $480 billion, which is more than 36 US states and puts it at #25 in the world if it were a country (that's using 2020 Fed numbers for BCN and 2017 global numbers, so not perfect)

We're almost there! There's just this one final step before the next final step, and then there's that other final final step. But we're basically already there so there's no reason to want any effort to be put into any alternatives.

I believe the sequence is that in 2023 there will be a study to determine the viability. Assuming that goes perfectly, in 2024 there will be a study to figure out how to execute it. Assuming that, too, goes perfectly, 2025 will be spent talking budget. Assuming that goes perfectly, deployment would begin in 2026 and will be centered around limited test deployments in homeless encampments. 2027 would see full city-wide deployment, except there will probably be a delay due to installation temporarily blocking a bike lane. So, we should see this municipal network built from rainbows and unicorns some time around 2028 assuming it all goes perfectly. The more realistic timeline has the network beginning to crawl around 2030.

And before I get written off as just a sarcastic twit, consider looking up Participatory Budget cycles. These projects are vastly smaller scale (like, three orders of magnitude smaller), already budgeted, already approved, and don't require multiple rounds of paid background research. Despite this, they still take 5-7 years to execute if they finish at all (over 7 years later, the signaling project for the #1 bus from 2015's PB2 still isn't complete, the bus signs from 2016's PB3 haven't even advanced beyond the planning phase, etc etc).

It’s the crime. A lot of business owners in the area have voiced concern over the crime situation. The homeless population, many of them who are also drug users have become problematic. Expect more businesses to move out of central square if Cambridge doesn’t do something about this.

I've got a pot of it bubbling on the stove now! Gonna put it in jars for the farmer's market.

Ah yes what will the Children do without parking

I keep asking this every few months when the topic comes up... So what's the status on the municipal broadband push?

California is an entire state and has a GDP larger than like 75% of the countries in the world. Cambridge is a tiny ass fucking town.

This is a joke right?

This city is so owned by private interests that rent control has not only been dead for decades, but the masses just celebrated eliminating parking minimums in new construction to spite the children and elderly so as to afford six more luxury condo sales per each foreign developer, per each ground-level parking level eliminated.

You want community insulin in the home of Eli Lilly? In the land of: balls so big: We will Crispr humanity's self-labeled elite faster than you can outbreed our paying subscribers?!

Share with me what Knowledge can persuade this golden golem of more is more and quality is secondary to number.

Because it’s a stupid logistical nightmare of an idea that won’t actually help most people and disincentivizes actual innovation

Hmm. I've used a Pur filter in different places and this summer/fall is the first time I've had a filter pass water wayyy slower than it should just weeks after installation. I haven't come up with any possible explanation until now.

What exactly is happening?

This was brought up in another local sub: https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/yudhiy/greater_boston_has_3109_life_science_companies/

TLDR Nearly all companies here specialize in researching drugs and not making them.

I think it really depends on how it's done. Most residential neighborhoods don't have much of any foot traffic unless they have retail/restaurant/services there. And if you look at the places with luxury buildings they've recently built (e.g. over in the Kendall area), those places are dead zones except where there's ground level retail space.

There have been a whole lot of complaints from people in the immediate neighborhood. They're not the ones supporting this.

But the city's consultant did a simulation that said only one additional car per minute would use Concord! How's it even possible that the computer was wrong?

This is what happens when someone makes a decision and then comes up with "data" to support it afterward.

Same, actually they cut my bill by $25 just to give me 6x the download speed. The service is fine but fuck them for making me play the game every year.

Tons of bullshit hidden fees too.

Ahh, you're right, I just never noticed the residential nearby. But still, adding more residential will only increase the activity level wherever it is built.