"Uber battle goes to heart of Cambridge; Tech boom pits innovators against locals concerned about quality of life" by Michael B. Farrell | Globe Staff June 21, 2014
To the new set that dominates Kendall Square, Uber Technologies Inc. represents the ultimate marriage of technology and utility, a smartphone app for a private car service that is emblematic of the hacker spirit that pulses through the city’s many startups.
Boston a Hub for hacking?
But the other Cambridge, with legions of neighborhood activists and public officials who favor government oversight, worries that left unchecked Uber is a threat to public safety as well as to the livelihoods of hard-working cabbies.
The latest chapter in this battle played out Tuesday night, when the Cambridge License Commission proposed subjecting Uber and other so-called ride-sharing services to same regulations as taxi cabs, and other restrictions that would be likely to limit its service and possibly drive up costs of a trip.
The proposal enraged Uber’s fans, many of whom were dumbfounded that a city they identify as a cradle of innovation would dare to bring so bold an innovator as Uber to heel, and they naturally turned to Twitter to make their point.
“A red light for Uber would make Cambridge the laughingstock of the tech world. Tech sustains our local jobs and future,” tweeted Russ Wilcox, a well-known local entrepreneur who co-founded E-Ink and now runs a startup in Kendall Square.
But veterans of Cambridge politics said they were not surprised at how the Uber battle has exposed the rift between the tech types who have shaped Cambridge’s image to the outside world, and the locals who fear that runaway development, fueled by the tech boom, threatens to make their city unlivable and unaffordable.
“They see each other as separate and competing entities, and they only rarely cooperate when they feel mutually threatened,” said Bob Simha, a former director of planning for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who oversaw the school’s development plans in Kendall Square.
And those differences are only growing more pronounced as the technology industry dominates Cambridge’s economy.
“You have a whole new population that is quite comfortable with not only innovation, but a whole way of living that doesn’t have a whole lot of concern for the traditional view for how Cambridge should work,” said Simha.
There have been other flashpoints between the two worlds within Cambridge. In 2012, residents mobilized when Google Inc. proposed an expansion of its Kendall Square campus that would cut into a rooftop garden used by the public. Many complained the tech giant was ruining a valuable community asset with little regard for the people of Cambridge.
Those voices lost out and Google got its rooftop expansion. Similar battles have played out many times throughout the city’s history.
When the Kendall Square area around MIT was being redeveloped in the 1970s, local activists and city officials argued it should become a place where “blue collar jobs” were plentiful. One resident at the time lambasted development officials for wanting to turn Kendall into a “prosperous metropolitan city for students, professionals and the jet set.”
Those words now seem prophetic. Today Cambridge has some of the most expensive real estate prices in the Boston area and in many ways, Kendall Square is now a neighborhood of the elite and highly educated....
Not for me then.
--more--"
Time to hail a cab.
Related: Cambridge mulls rules that would regulate Uber
Also see:
Uber isn’t the problem; taxi regulations are
Cambridge vs. Uber: Innovation hub protects taxis, hurts own reputation
European taxi drivers protest Uber car-paging service
Maybe you would be better off taking a bus.
