City Of Cambridge Research Articles

“Residence at C___”: Veronica Forrest-Thomson and Lisa Robertson Writing Cambridge

This essay explores the much neglected late modernist poetry of Veronica Forrest-Thomson and reads it alongside Lisa Robertson’s book-length poem The Weather (2001), examining its connection to the city of Cambridge. Locating these works in the context of women writing what is commonly called Cambridge poetry, it investigates how this, as well as the surrounding features of the town, are incorporated into the poems and whether they are, as Lisa Robertson suggests, “site-specific.” Through their formal and conceptual innovations, much informed by their institutional and architectural surroundings, texts such as these create new conceptual spaces out of old traditions through formal innovation that is conceptualized as intellectual or emotional “architecture.”

Susceptibility assessment of urban tree species in Cambridge, MA, from future climatic extremes

The City of Cambridge, Massachusetts, recognizes the value of the city’s urban forest in terms of air quality, lower wind speeds, esthetics, energy conservation, reduced noise pollution, habitat value, decreased runoff, and bolstering of local businesses and property values. The density, composition, and location of street and city park trees comprising the urban forest will be influenced by future climate-driven extreme weather events. In this study, we have developed an approach for assessing impacts of multiple extreme weather scenarios likely to become more frequent under climate change and subsequently influence the composition of street and park trees. This potential for loss of trees as a result of one (or more) of these climate-related extreme weather events is considered to be one indicator of the susceptibility of Cambridge’s urban forest to climate-related weather events. The scenarios considered were a hurricane/tropical storm similar to tropical storm Sandy in 2012, heat stress, snow or ice loading (e.g., loss of tree limbs), Asian longhorn beetle or emerald ash borer infestations, and the cumulative effect from the addition of all these scenarios. The literature was used to assess the sensitivity of tree species to each threat and determine the anticipated loss of individuals from each species. The results are a reasonable indication of the more tolerant tree species in Cambridge and their locations. This assessment of susceptibility can inform proactive management of the urban forest.

Assessing visual green effects of individual urban trees using airborne Lidar data

Urban trees benefit people's daily life in terms of air quality, local climate, recreation and aesthetics. Among these functions, a growing number of studies have been conducted to understand the relationship between residents' preference towards local environments and visual green effects of urban greenery. However, except for on-site photography, there are few quantitative methods to calculate green visibility, especially tree green visibility, from viewers' perspectives.To fill this research gap, a case study was conducted in the city of Cambridge, which has a diversity of tree species, sizes and shapes. Firstly, a photograph-based survey was conducted to approximate the actual value of visual green effects of individual urban trees. In addition, small footprint airborne Lidar (Light detection and ranging) data was employed to measure the size and shape of individual trees. Next, correlations between visual tree green effects and tree structural parameters were examined. Through experiments and gradual refinement, a regression model with satisfactory R2 and limited large errors is proposed. Considering the diversity of sample trees and the result of cross-validation, this model has the potential to be applied to other study sites. This research provides urban planners and decision makers with an innovative method to analyse and evaluate landscape patterns in terms of tree greenness.

The Development of Technical Services Training

I BEGIN with Robert Frost:Ants are a curious race;One crossing with hurried treadThe body of one of their deadIsn't given a moment's arrest-Seems not even impressed.But he no doubt reports to anyWith whom he crosses antennae,And they no doubt reportTo the higher up at court.Then word goes forth in Formic:Death's come to Jerry McCormic,Our selfless forager Jerry.Will the special JanizaryWhose office it is to buryThe dead of the commissaryGo bring him home to his people.Lay him in state on a sepal.Wrap him for shroud in a petal.Embalm him with ichor of nettle.This is the word of your Queen.And presently on the sceneAppears a solemn mortician;And taking formal positionWith feelers calmly atwiddle,Seizes the dead by the middle,And heaving him high in the air,Carries him out of there.No one stands round to stare.It is nobody else's affair.It couldn't be called ungentle.But how thoroughly departmental.How thoroughly departmental! The chain of command to the queen; the detailed routine for every move of the rank and file. So it goes also in the technical services. The chain of command to the chief; the detailed routines and rules for the order librarian, the serials librarian, the catalog librarian.Now departmentalism-the ant's eye view;-works well enough perhaps when we set up a department of technical services within a library. But can we carry this departmentalism into the world of the mind? At once we face at least two groups of questions:1. The chain of command: Is the idea of technical services an intellectual concept or is it simply an administrative device? Is technical services a discipline such as mathematics or the classics; or is it simply the administrative union of some groups of people with various skills ? What of the various units within the department? The fine line between ordering and book selection-who can see it clearly? Does cataloging include classification ? Where do subject headings fall ? Should the cataloging student deal only with cataloging tools-e.g., Sears and Dewey-or should he also learn of general reference tools-e.g., C.B.I, or D.N.B. ? What are serials? Cataloging or order work? Finally, how much of what we call technical services may most profitably appear in the curriculum as segments of other courses-e.g., library administration courses?2. The routines and rules: Can-or should-routines and rules be taught in school? Are they the stuffgraduate study is made of? The techniques of catalog card reproduction change even as we talk of them. Book dealers come and go. Serial routines of yesterday no longer do the job well. Apart from a few basic facts about cataloging and classification, is there not much in the technical services that might better be learned on the job, or that is so fluid it cannot be taught at any one time in any one course?The world of the library and the world of the mind: our two questions raise an ancient dilemma:The history of the teaching of the technical services goes back at least to Melvil Dewey at Columbia in 1887. Dewey had described his proposed School of Library Economy at the A.L.A. Convention in Buffalo in 1883 and asked for comments. Poole had at once obliged:I think [Mr. Dewey] is in error in stating that there is now no institution in this country for educating librarians. I have the impression that there is an excellent one in Boston, known as the Boston Public Library; there is another in Boston called the Boston Athenaeum, and still another in the adjacent city of Cambridge, called the Harvard College Library . . . There is no training school for educating librarians like a well-managed library,1Cutter had a characteristic reply:Undoubtedly it is well that a librarian should have worked in a library; there are some things which he will never understand unless he has. …

Method for Assessing Bus Delay in Mixed Traffic to Identify Transit Priority Improvement Locations in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Urban transit services face a number of challenges from space constraints, congestion, and delays, among other issues. Implementing bus priority at traffic signals or providing exclusive operating space for buses can increase the attractiveness of taking the bus and thereby encourage ridership. The City of Cambridge, Massachusetts, was looking to pilot such interventions to demonstrate benefits of bus ridership, but needed a prioritized list of route segments with the largest levels of excess travel time to do so. Three metrics were used to evaluate delay: vehicle delay, overall passenger delay, and system reliability. These three metrics were combined into a single composite rating system for each segment and used to identify route segments along which buses experienced the most delay. The City of Cambridge analyzed high-ridership bus routes with automatic passenger counter data to identify segments along the route where buses experienced substantial delay. The next step for this project is to conduct an on-site field visit of targeted segments to develop potential bus prioritization proposals for each. This paper outlines the method developed to calculate bus delay by segment and presents results for one route analyzed.

An Object-Based Method for Urban Land Cover Classification Using Airborne Lidar Data

Airborne Lidar (Light detection and ranging) data have been widely used for classifying different land cover types. However, few researchers have conducted urban land cover classification using discrete airborne Lidar data as the sole data source. This research explores the possibility of applying airborne Lidar data to land cover classification in urban areas. The elevation difference and intensity difference between the first and last return, which may not work efficiently in pixel-based classification, were employed as two key attributes at the object level. Since tree objects have a much larger proportion of returns which show the elevation and intensity difference, the two indicators were used to classify the most indistinguishable land cover types, buildings and trees. In addition, height and intensity information were integrated to classify other land cover types. A case study was conducted in the city of Cambridge and eight urban land cover types were classified with an overall accuracy of 93.6%. Each land cover type was classified with an accuracy of between 80% and 100% and among these types, the accuracy of more than 90% for trees and buildings was satisfactory.

“Tertiary level” sewer separation benefits Great Swamp

The City of Cambridge, Mass., tackled infrastructure improvements to maximize separated stormwater quality.

AstraZeneca’s Experiment

The bicycle-filled city of Cambridge, England, has been closely tied to biotechnology since 1953, when Francis H. C. Crick and James D. Watson discovered the structure of DNA in the University of Cambridge’s Cavendish building. Other luminaries that once studied at the university include Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin. Attracted by the university’s high caliber of academic research, today about 200 biotech companies make their own discoveries in and around Cambridge. Joining them in 2016 will be AstraZeneca. The big British drug company will pluck about 2,000 researchers from Alderley Park, its R&D site in a remote part of northern England, and other locations, and set them down in Cambridge’s bustling biotech community. The firm hopes that embracing a new model of collaboration will enable it to reinvent itself as an innovative force. “Our people will be able to rub shoulders with some of the world’s best scientists and clinicians,” ...

A method for predicting city-wide electricity gains from photovoltaic panels based on LiDAR and GIS data combined with hourly Daysim simulations

In this paper we present, demonstrate and validate a method for predicting city-wide electricity gains from photovoltaic panels based on detailed 3D urban massing models combined with Daysim-based hourly irradiation simulations, typical meteorological year climactic data and hourly calculated rooftop temperatures. The resulting data can be combined with online mapping technologies and search engines as well as a financial module that provides building owners interested in installing a photovoltaic system on their rooftop with meaningful data regarding spatial placement, system size, installation costs and financial payback. As a proof of concept, a photovoltaic potential map for the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, consisting of over 17,000 rooftops has been implemented as of September 2012.The new method constitutes the first linking of increasingly available GIS and LiDAR urban datasets with the validated building performance simulation engine Daysim, thus-far used primarily at the scale of individual buildings or small urban neighborhoods. A comparison of the new method with its predecessors reveals significant benefits as it produces hourly point irradiation data, supports better geometric accuracy, considers reflections from near by urban context and uses predicted rooftop temperatures to calculate hourly PV efficiency. A validation study of measured and simulated electricity yields from two rooftop PV installations in Cambridge shows that the new method is able to predict annual electricity gains within 3.6–5.3% of measured production when calibrating for actual weather data and detailed PV panel geometry. This predicted annual error using the new method is shown to be less than the variance which can be expected from climactic variation between years. Furthermore, because the new method generates hourly data, it can be applied to peak load mitigation studies at the urban level. This study also compares predicted monthly energy yields using the new method to those of preceding methods for the two validated test installations and on an annual basis for 10 buildings selected randomly from the Cambridge dataset.

The Harvard Living Wage Campaign: Origins and Strategy

A member of the Harvard living wage campaign explains its internal development. Begun in 1998, the campaign drew inspiration from the global justice movement, organized labor’s reawakening, and the flowering of college anti-sweatshop groups. Locally, it responded to a decade of attacks on Harvard workers’ livelihoods and unions, as well as the enactment of a living wage ordinance by the city of Cambridge. The article recounts the campaign’s organizing strategy and tactics, its oppositional relationship to the Harvard administration, and the university’s response. Finally, it discusses the campaign’s limited victory on wages and contracting policies, as well as its significance for campus unions, students who participated, and student-labor mobilization beyond Harvard.

Upward-fusion urban DTM generating method using airborne Lidar data

Airborne Lidar (Light detection and ranging) is an efficient tool for the generation of Digital Terrain Models (DTMs). Although many studies have been conducted in generating DTMs using Lidar data, it is still a challenging research area. The difficulty in filtering large buildings as well as a diversity of urban features makes the design of urban DTM generating methods an ongoing priority.This research adopted an upward-fusion methodology to generate urban DTMs using airborne Lidar data. Firstly, several preliminary DTMs of different resolutions were obtained using a local minimum method. Next, upward fusion was conducted between these DTMs. This process began with the DTM of the largest grid size, which was treated as a trend surface. A finer DTM was compared with this large scale DTM. By setting appropriate thresholds, a new DTM was achieved by selecting qualified elevation values from the finer DTM and retaining the value of the trend surface when the value from the finer DTM was beyond the threshold. This process continued iteratively until all preliminary DTMs had been included in the upward fusion and a refined DTM of high resolution was achieved. To further reduce possible errors in the resulting DTM, an extended local minimum method was proposed for filtering outliers and generating preliminary DTMs.A case study was carried out in the city of Cambridge, which represents an urban landscape with a variety of building forms, street patterns and vegetation structures. The time efficiency, results of the accuracy assessments and comparison with leading software proved the success of the case study and indicated that upward-fusion was an effective method for the generation of urban DTMs with airborne Lidar data and could improve the accuracy of other DTM generating algorithms. This paper also proposed possible approaches for further improvements on this methodology.

Your ID, please? the Henry Gates vs. James Crowley event from an anthropological perspective

In the modern world, ID papers are those indispensable objects without which we cannot prove we are who we say we are. We need material proof to attest to our identification. The central ethnographic event of this paper took place in July 2009 with the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. by the police of the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, after a passer-by reported that someone was breaking of the entrance door of a house which, it soon transpired, was the professor's own house. From the analysis of this episode three mechanisms of classification and singularization are revealed, namely "recognition," "identification," and "profiling."

Identifique-se!o caso Henry Gates versus James Crowley como exercício antropológico

No mundo moderno, documentos são aqueles objetos indispensáveis, sem os quais não conseguimos demonstrar que somos quem dizemos ser. Precisamos de provas materiais que atestem a veracidade da nossa autoidentificação. Neste ensaio, a prisão do professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. pela polícia da cidade de Cambridge, Massachusetts, nos Estados Unidos, é analisada de modo a verificar os mecanismos por meio dos quais se realizam os processos de classificação e singularização no mundo contemporâneo, que, além da identificação, incluem o reconhecimento e o profiling.

Fresh Pond: the history of a Cambridge landscape

Fresh Pond Reservation, at northwest edge of Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been described as a loved to death. Certainly it is a landscape that has been changed by its various uses over years and one to which Cantabridgeans and Bostonians have felt an intense attachment. Henry James returned to it in his sixties, looking for echo of dreams of youth, feeling keenly the pleasure of memory; a Harvard student of 1850s fondly remembered skating parties and chance of flirtation with some fair-ankled beauty of breezy Boston; modern residents argue fiercely over dogs being allowed to run free at reservation and whether soccer or nature is a more valuable experience for Cambridge schoolchildren. In Fresh Pond, Jill Sinclair tells story of pond and its surrounding land through photographs, drawings, maps, plans, and an engaging narrative of pond's geological, historical, and political ecology. Fresh Pond has been a Native American hunting and fishing ground; site of an eighteenth-century hotel offering bowling, food and wine, and impromptu performances by Harvard men; a summer retreat for wealthy Bostonians; a training ground for trench warfare; a location for picnics and festivals for workers and sporting activities for all. The parkland features an Olmsted design, albeit an imperfectly realized one. The pond itself--a natural lake carved out by retreating Ice Age about 15,000 years ago--was a center of nineteenth-century ice industry (disparaged by Thoreau, writing about another pond), and still supplies city of Cambridge with fresh drinking water. Sinclair's celebration of a local landscape also alerts us to broader issues--shifts in public attitudes toward nature (is it brutal wilderness or in need of protection?) and water (precious commodity or limitless flow?)--that resonate as we remake our relationship to landscape.

Cambridge's experience of road user charging: lessons learned

In the early 1990s Cambridgeshire County Council considered the implementation of a road user charging scheme for the city of Cambridge, UK. This involved the trial of a congestion metering scheme, a form of road user charging. Cambridge presented an ideal opportunity for the implementation of a road user charging scheme not least in terms of its congestion problem, the free-standing nature of the city and the fact that at the time, the local authority in the form of the council was sympathetic to the objectives of road user charging. The scheme did not, however, proceed and many reasons have been put forward as to why this was the case—issues such as not all the alternatives having been exhausted, the level of sophistication of the proposed scheme and the lack of a similar scheme to consider elsewhere. Fifteen years later, Cambridgeshire is once again considering the whole issue of road user charging. As such, the aim of this paper is to assess how the authority is proceeding this time round: what type of technology is being considered; how the politicians are presenting the concept to the local population and what are they doing differently from the first time round, in terms of consultation; and most importantly, what provision for alternative means of transport will be made and how this relates to the potential success of any road user charging scheme? The paper aims to conclude on what lessons can be learnt in terms of other cities considering the implementation of a road user charging scheme.

Development of practitioner guidelines for partnerships between start‐ups and large firms

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to illustrate the development of the final outputs of a research project looking at partnerships between technology‐based start‐ups and large firms (“asymmetric” partnerships). It presents the stage of the research aimed at understanding how best to design outputs to assist firms in managing such partnerships.Design/methodology/approachA combination of company case studies, company workshops, an end‐user survey and pilot dissemination programme were used to identify an appropriate form for the packaging and delivery of the research findings (i.e. what problems can be encountered in such partnerships, and what approaches companies have implemented to overcome these problems).FindingsA range of approaches for overcoming the problems of managing partnerships between firms whose age and size are markedly different were catalogued. The research presented in this paper revealed that companies felt best able to learn from the experiences of others through a combination of direct support, multi‐company workshops, and online access to selected materials.Research limitations/implicationsThe generalisability of the findings may be limited by the fact that the majority of the organisations collaborating in this research either were located in the high‐technology business cluster in and around the city of Cambridge, UK or had formed partnerships with companies in this geographic region.Practical implicationsPartnerships between technology‐based start‐ups and technology‐intensive large firms can provide an effective means of accessing and integrating the complementary assets required to bring a novel technology to market. This research will help firms overcome the numerous challenges involved in setting up and managing such partnerships by providing stakeholders with easier access to academic research findings. It will assist researchers who are considering how to disseminate research outputs to industry.Originality/valueThere is a strong body of work on improving the performance of partnerships in general, but less on overcoming the practical challenges of managing partnerships between firms of markedly different age and scale. In addition, the selection of the optimum process for ensuring that the findings of such research are used to support implementation remains a topic of debate. This work helps to address both gaps.

The Applicability of Space Syntax to Bicycle Facility Planning

With the emergence of bicycles as an increasingly viable form of urban transportation comes the need for improved design and planning tools. Existing methods for evaluating bicycle facilities and for prioritizing their construction and maintenance are reviewed. Two components are necessary for such an analysis: one for assessing the quality of the segments that make up the network, and one for assessing the overall network itself. Space syntax analysis is evaluated as a tool for network assessment on the basis of its potential to predict patterns of travel over different network configurations. The theory behind space syntax is evaluated and then tested by using data from the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts. A good model for predicting bicycle volumes within a network can be constructed by using only census data and the space syntax measure “choice.” Unlike existing bicycle suitability measures, space syntax describes the importance of segments to the connectivity or completeness of the network.

Implementing Road User Charging: The Lessons Learnt from Hong Kong, Cambridge and Central London

Road user charging has long been advocated as a means of dealing with congestion in urban areas. Numerous schemes have been proposed but have advanced little beyond the drawing board. This paper draws on the experiences of two such road user charging schemes, namely Electronic Road Pricing in Hong Kong, China, and Congestion Metering in the city of Cambridge, UK, and it seeks to make comparisons with the way implementation of congestion charging in Central London, UK, has been undertaken. What lessons can be learnt from the three examples that would aid authorities considering such a course of action? Certain issues have contributed to the two schemes not being implemented, such as the level of congestion not being severe enough, the clarity of objectives, invasion of road user’s privacy, and timing and presentation. The paper seeks to compare and contrast the issues resulting in the schemes not being implemented with those of the successfully implemented scheme. The conclusion is that it is not possible to attribute the successful implementation of congestion charging to one issue alone. The role of a policy champion, public support given the severity of congestion, a single implementing agency, an understanding of the scheme’s objectives, and timing and clear presentation have all been important factors.

Economic growth in a historic city—the transport challenge

The university city of Cambridge in eastern England has long been a popular place to live—even more so now it has become the UK's equivalent of Silicon Valley. But as with many other historic cities in Europe enjoying an economic boom, balancing increased transport demands with the need to maintain an attractive urban environment is a continual problem.This paper reports on the pioneering yet practical initiatives undertaken in and around Cambridge with varying degrees of success over the past 35 years, culminating in virtual daytime closure of the city centre to car traffic. It involves an innovative scheme of rising bollards for buses and taxis and one of the most advanced park-and-ride schemes in the world.

Economic growth in a historic city?the transport challenge

The university city of Cambridge in eastern England has long been a popular place to live—even more so now it has become the UK's equivalent of Silicon Valley. But as with many other historic cities in Europe enjoying an economic boom, balancing increased transport demands with the need to maintain an attractive urban environment is a continual problem.This paper reports on the pioneering yet practical initiatives undertaken in and around Cambridge with varying degrees of success over the past 35 years, culminating in virtual daytime closure of the city centre to car traffic. It involves an innovative scheme of rising bollards for buses and taxis and one of the most advanced park-and-ride schemes in the world.