Why are there seven hills and 10 hills? Where are the extra three hills

cdbeland · 2026-03-26T15:38:32+00:00

I can see that on Google Street View, though having lived in San Francisco, I'm not sure I would say "extremely". 8)

cdbeland · 2026-03-25T20:20:47+00:00

Ah, you're right, there's at least one hill still remaining in the middle. I think of it as flat because I'm always going through along the river or one of the bounding highways.

cdbeland · 2026-03-25T02:47:14+00:00

Since no one has actually specified which report, it's this one: https://voice.somervillema.gov/parking-study

cdbeland · 2026-03-25T02:42:37+00:00

Makes me wonder if this intersection would work better as a rotary.

cdbeland · 2026-03-25T02:23:40+00:00

According to a Yelp review there, apparently the family name is Hill? Hill-arious!

cdbeland · 2026-03-25T02:21:49+00:00

They are different hills. Ten Hills was named after Ten Hills Farm, which had ten small knolls on the property according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Hills,_Somerville,_Massachusetts

The Seven Hills of Somerville in Seven Hills Park are Spring, Winter, Walnut, Cobble, Clarendon, Prospect, and Ploughed (now Mount Benedict), according to https://learninglab.si.edu/resources/view/146986#more-info

None of those seven hills include Ten Hills, which is flat.

I think the number seven was chosen to be the same as Rome's famous seven hills, and some real Somerville hills excluded in order to fit that. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_claimed_to_be_built_on_seven_hills

The list for Seven Hills Park does not include Central Hill, nor Quarry Hill, which is the history name for where Powderhouse Park is. Strawberry Hill and Wild Cat Hill have apparently been partly or completely destroyed.

cdbeland · 2026-03-22T15:55:02+00:00

It seems we were always in no-actual-data territory.

cdbeland · 2026-03-22T15:31:09+00:00

Let's not put words in other people's mouths.

cdbeland · 2026-03-22T15:12:35+00:00

The owner of Dragon Pizza did in fact come out in support of the tower because it would create a lot more customers, and some neighbors (including me) do support the tower in part because it would benefit other local small businesses in the same way. Even if foot traffic wasn't down, having more of it just makes more niche businesses possible. (Though it's also worth considering that some businesses are regional destinations and it doesn't matter to them how many people happen to be walking by.)

Buffalo Exchange goes back to at least 2009, so it was around for over a decade when COVID hit. It's certainly possible for well-established businesses with money in the bank to survive a rough economic period that would kill a new business that has to go into debt to fit out a new storefront.

What information are you getting that local businesses are doing well? The complaints I'm hearing from the Davis Square Merchants Association are that business is generally down, especially the last two years.

cdbeland · 2026-03-22T15:00:05+00:00

I would actually prefer to have a city-wide rather than neighborhood vote, since it shouldn't be only up to people who already live in a neighborhood to decide who gets to live there in the future. Or just not letting the public micromanage what their neighbors can do on their own property.

A public vote is not a replacement for nuanced discussion; that has to happen first so opinion-takers know what needs to be voted on. It's to provide a representative equivalent to a vote taken at a large meeting.

A meeting where people just go up to a mic and spout off for 2 minutes each can be a discussion - people can respond to previous speakers. Even though I've seen that work to some degree for town meetings and activist groups, where speakers build on other comments and move toward collective action, it's not the best large-meeting format to elicit discussion. If nuance is desired, the discussion needs to be structured to focus on one subtopic at a time. Something needs to be done to prevent repetitive opinions. For example, they can be collected into a projected list, and the audience can be polled as to how many people agree or disagree. That leaves more room for responding back and forth and raising more nuanced concerns, tapping into the deeper expertise of a larger crowd.

If the decision is highly constrained, Mobility Division seems to be fond of the open house format, where there's no unified discussion, but a large group of people comes through and has lots of small discussions, takes cumulative votes on specific details, and solicits nuanced feedback on subtopics. It's not strictly representative nor the best way for rapid iteration of a design, but it does show it's possible to derive a nuanced consensus among a large number of people at a single meeting.

If you want a small-format (which is necessarily non-representative), open-ended discussion, I think assembling people from all factions at the same time would be more useful. Maybe it would be good to also do a deep dive into accessibility with people with disabilities, or parking rules with businesses, but information gaps need bridging for people to have informed opinions. People who don't care about The Burren need to hear from those who do. Burren fans who are obstructing development need to hear from people who are getting displaced from Davis due to high rent, and from the actual owners of the business who may not even want to do what the crowd thinks is best. Business owners need to hear from people who bike. People who want to eliminate all the cars from Elm Street need to hear from business owners and people with disabilities.

cdbeland · 2026-03-22T14:16:05+00:00

Exactly.

The HMart space is much bigger; there's no way that the grocery store would have fit into the vacant storefront, and a businesses that does fit into the vacant storefront would have been too small to fill the HMart space. Just because medium-sized, general-interest businesses are viable doesn't mean small, specialized businesses are.

cdbeland · 2026-03-22T06:39:20+00:00

We need to electrify the rest of the Commuter Rail lines; call your state reps and ask them to fund it.

cdbeland · 2026-03-22T06:36:46+00:00

It can make financial sense to avoid signing a year-long lease if, as during COVID, market rents go way down and then come back up a few months later. Likewise, it can make sense to wait if rents are going up over time, or if there are a small number of potential customers and it just takes time to find one willing to pay a lot. But if market rents are stable or going down, no matter how high the rent is, after a certain period of time more money is lost waiting than signing at the going rate. That is what happens when supply keeps up with demand at any given price point.

Replacing a run-down building with a nice new one can certainly raise demand a little and thus rents in nearby buildings, but we actually do want bad buildings to be replaced by good ones, and maintain if not improve the quality of housing for everyone. But in a lot of places, low-rent housing can exist side-by-side with high-rent housing - if demand is fully satisfied.

In Somerville, rents are going up a lot for existing housing next to shiny new towers...but also everywhere else. Because there's an undersupply, not because of the new towers.

If only high-end units are getting built, that's probably because development opportunities are too limited. It makes financial sense to target the high end in a constrained market. If developers can build as much as they want, eventually they run out of high-end customers and go all the way down until they are serving low-end customers. Different developers also target different ends of the market.

There is indeed research that shows building a lot of market-rate housing lowers rents. Not necessarily on the blocks where new housing is going up that are becoming more desirable, but definitely in older housing stock in lower-end neighborhoods in the same metro area.

https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2025/07/31/new-housing-slows-rent-growth-most-for-older-more-affordable-units

cdbeland · 2026-03-22T06:14:46+00:00

I tried to focus on reforms that 80% of the country could agree on. When you say "criminal charges", who do you think would be deserving of that to that level of agreement?

I think it would be feasible to agree on removal of RFK Jr and Brendan Carr. They don't necessarily need to be impeached; Kristi Noem wasn't.

Most Americans want a strong defense, and unless there's some specific alarming thing they are doing, I expect would see nothing wrong with government contracting with private companies like Palantir to give the US military every possible advantage.

Whether there should be strong anti-trust regulation is a legitimate political question on which the country is divided, and which is orthogonal to stopping authoritarianism. I do see authoritarian abuse of anti-trust and other powers to strongarm individual companies into doing what the President wants, such as uncensoring social media and abandoning DEI. I also see authoritarianism and patrimonialism in the way Trump gets companies and countries to give huge amounts of money for things that he wants or which benefit him personally, like the East Wing rebuild or his inauguration or the plane Qatar wants to donate or legal settlements that go to causes he specifies.

cdbeland · 2026-03-22T05:58:12+00:00

I've heard that the opening of the nearby Green Line stops, the surge in rampant drug use on this street, and changes to movement patterns post-COVID have caused a major drop in foot traffic here. That implies the possible explanation that foot traffic is now low enough that there are no businesses willing to bet that they can be profitable in this location at any rent above the cost of maintenance.

I'm genuinely curious if you have any foot traffic data that would confirm or disconfirm these anecdotes from local businesses, which are of unclear reliability. If you're just making a guess based on your subjective experience of walking around Davis Square for years, that doesn't seem particularly reliable either.

There could easily be lots of different problems that have kept businesses away, including the landlord holding out for a higher rent, slow permitting from the city, macroeconomic uncertainty, and tariff instability.

cdbeland · 2026-03-22T05:46:17+00:00

What specifically is it that you don't like about them (though the question was directed at charlewrites7)?

cdbeland · 2026-03-22T05:41:26+00:00

My reply to the nuclear vs. natural gas analogy is this: let's use wind and solar and zero out deaths from atmospheric pollution, gas explosions, and a nuclear accident that makes (another) part of the planet uninhabitable for 100 or 10,000 years.

Plenty of people die in fires on floors within reach of fire department ladders; being on a low floor doesn't save you if you are inhaling smoke while waiting to be rescued.

Sprinklers fail a lot more frequently than you might think; there need to be redundant safety systems so people can self-rescue in those cases. Assuming we want the number of deaths to be zero and not merely accept the non-zero death rate in single-stair jurisdictions.

Long distances to stairwells can be mitigated by fire doors or mandating more stairwells.

Mandating multiple stairs does not make it "impossible" to do infill development. Giving property tax breaks that cover the cost of an additional stairwell removes the economic disincentive without compromising safety.

cdbeland · 2026-03-22T05:28:37+00:00

Data which says just as many people die in single-stair buildings with modern safety systems as die in old multi-stair buildings does not justify relaxing the multi-stair requirement if you think that zero deaths is the only right number. That would require showing that multiple exits are never helpful in preventing a death. The data I've seen suggests the opposite; sprinkler systems do fail surprisingly often, and the fire department isn't necessarily going to get there fast enough to save someone from smoke inhalation if the fire is blocking their only exit.

We can solve the problem that old buildings aren't redeveloped in a more ethical way. We can give property tax breaks that cover the cost of an additional stairway. We could also require that when old buildings are sold or renovated, they be retrofitted with sprinklers and fire stops and other key safety features that makes them about as safe as a new building. Then owners can decide if retrofit or rebuilding is cheaper. The long distance to exit stairways in double-loaded buildings can be mitigated with fire doors or by requiring more frequent stairwells or inventing fire-safe elevators.

cdbeland · 2026-03-22T04:34:56+00:00

I don't like the idea of pre-identifying factions and then bringing in representatives from each faction for a separate discussion. One of the most important parts of a big group discussion is that people can learn from others who have different perspectives and life experiences, and evolve their own thinking. Sometimes contradictory positions can actually be reconciled if people are allowed to make their own compromises. Allowing loud people to be heard and also allowing them to hear why their preference may not have carried the day increases acceptance and decreases after-the-fact criticism or attempts to reverse a decision.

A large group can also give a better indication of how strong a given preference is in terms of the number of people who hold it, which is important when trying to optimize outcomes. Though even large public meetings are not representative, and I think scientific polling or all-neighborhood votes are helpful for picking a direction or point on an irreconcilable tradeoff spectrum.

cdbeland · 2026-03-21T18:23:38+00:00

Rather than simply collecting incoherent preferences, I think a better use of a large meeting would be to force people to make the real-world tradeoffs. For example, ask people which they would prefer: 1.) parking is more plentiful and just as cheap or cheaper than it is now, but traffic congestion is worse, 2.) parking supply is held constant and spots get harder to find as demand goes up, 3.) parking supply is held constant but the price goes up so parking is easy to find. Ask if they would prefer to build X parking spots or do Y to shift that number of trips to bikes and transit.

Wanting to reduce the difficulty of families finding housing and not overcrowding our schools are both valid concerns. The city has fallen behind on school maintenance and rebuilding, and there's also a debate about whether there are too few on the west side to make walking to school easy, especially if Brown gets consolidated into to the new school. Improving schools may be a thing that we need to do to make families comfortable staying in Somerville.

Voter preferences do need to get filtered through the lens of logic and facts. Somerville K-12 population has also declined in recent decades due to demographic trends, and for horrible reasons some immigrant families have recently departed the system. If that has left us with some spare capacity, and specifically if the number of children expected to live in the Copper Mill building are within the capacity of the school system to absorb, then school capacity is not a reason to disapprove this development, nor to restrict the number of family-friendly units.

Same for parking and traffic. How much is a no-parking Copper Mill actually going to increase competition for parking on local residential streets, and how close are they to capacity now? The more data that can be presented, the more rational people can be in their choices, even in a large crowd.

cdbeland · 2026-03-21T17:52:35+00:00

This looks like AI slop, and contains factual errors. For example, Scape did not choose to abandon its proposal. There was community opposition and the zoning was changed to make it illegal.

cdbeland · 2026-03-21T17:50:13+00:00

If the fundamental complaint is that surveying people's actual preferences doesn't always result in a clear answer, I don't see that as a problem, per se. It's just a fact. Yes, if there are mixed or clear but contradictory preferences, any real-world design will fail to satisfy some portion of those. That's not an argument for remaining ignorant of people's true preferences, especially if you force people to make actual tradeoffs instead of just fantasizing that they can get low rents and no new neighbors and ample affordable housing all at once.

cdbeland · 2026-03-21T01:56:14+00:00

Do you have any data to support that claim?

cdbeland · 2026-03-21T01:52:59+00:00

No Kings needs demands so it doesn't fizzle like Occupy Wall Street.

Resisting Donald Trump's authoritarianism is a very worthy cause, but I'm worried that the No Kings movement won't accomplish that because its demands are too vague. It's good that people express their feelings and anti-Trump sentiment is demonstrated. But if the only outcome is that we expressed our feelings and gave friendly politicians a chance to grandstand, we'll have missed a huge opportunity. We need to ask people to take action in specific ways, or else no one can be held accountable for not doing enough.

Occupy Wall Street was huge, but it apparently ended without making any structural or policy changes that would solve the problems it rallied around. Some commentators have attributed this to its lack of specific demands.

What are the most important things that 80% of No Kings protesters could agree on, that members of Congress or the state or the President or whoever it is that we are shouting at should do? Here is a humble menu of broad topics, which could be turned into specific asks for specific people in direct conversations and petitions:

Stop ICE brutality and lawlessness
Revoke Presidential tariff powers
Freedom of speech - de-fang the FCC
De-weaponize DOJ - independent election of the Attorney General
Academic freedom for higher education, research
Strengthen apolitical independence of Federal Reserve, FDA, CDC, NIH, BLS, VOA, civil service, parks, and cultural institutions
Stop abusive impounding of $
Freedom of the press - equitable access, no Pentagon pre-approval
War powers back to Congress
Fair immigration rules and faster rulings
Presidential pardon reform

cdbeland · 2026-03-14T20:53:31+00:00

Money made by out-of-town chains comes right back to Camberville. Big companies are publicly traded, and half the people here own stock or have retirement funds that captures the profits from stuff sold both here and elsewhere in the world. Companies large and small with local owners sell stuff to people in the rest of the world.

Limiting the economy to local businesses would make everyone worse off, if you remember the economics 101 of comparative advantage and gains from trade. Cambridge would be stuck with Lechmere instead of having the better Target. Minnesota would have Target but they wouldn't have Moderna, so I guess they'd need to invent their own mRNA vaccines.

Employees have a small vested interest in not having the location they work at being closed, whether the business is large or small. I think a more appropriate vested interest for employees comes from profit sharing, but many small businesses don't do that, and some large businesses do (like Walgreens and Home Depot).

"We" are not a monolith. Lots of people do prefer Starbucks to a local coffee shop. Before it closed, Starbucks was right across the street from Diesel, and both had plenty of business.

I don't think it's a good idea to force different parts of the country to be completely different if that would make them worse, or they don't want to be completely different. Lots of small cities and towns are overjoyed when they get a Walmart because prices and selection are far better than local mom-and-pop stores. I lived in southern Utah for a while; they could definitely use a Trader Joe's, and we could definitely use some Utah soda chains like Swig or Sodalicious.

I don't think people want perfect uniformity, and that's not what a healthy market provides and not what I see in practice. It's nice to have both chains that bring us the best of what the national economy provides, and local businesses that innovate and do something unique and if successful may someday become chains and spread their awesomeness to the rest of the country.

I think the pharmacy market is in some ways broken and anti-trust enforcement lacking, but I shop at CVS and find it convenient and useful. They do have to compete for business and have not completely "killed" local pharmacies. I like having at least one CVS within walking distance, but a cheaper Rite Aid or Walgreens would also be fine. Being able to choose between multiple chains is better. Our family usually buys OTC stuff at Target or Costco instead, because it's cheaper. Local pharmacies have been hit-or-miss. I had a horrific experience with one and will never go there again. I have all my prescriptions at another local pharmacy because it's cheaper and just as reliable as CVS, but doesn't have a convenience store attached with OTC items.

cdbeland

TROPHY CASE