The Cambridge Citizens Coalition has become the Cambridge Citywide Coalition. Our initials remain the same, but the new name signals something larger: a more open, engaging and outward-looking organization focused on the future of the whole city.
Founded in 2017 by neighborhood leaders from across Cambridge, CCC has grown into a citywide network of residents engaged with housing, affordability, governance, transit, community, schools and the environment. Our board concluded that this was the right moment to adopt a new framing – and redesigned website – that betters reflect the work we already do and the organization we hope to become.
This is more than a rebranding. It is an invitation.
Cambridge is facing difficult, interconnected questions. How do we create more housing while making the city genuinely more affordable? How do we welcome new residents without displacing those already here? How do we accommodate population growth and new housing while protecting trees, reducing flooding risks, strengthening transit and preserving livable neighborhoods? And how do we ensure that residents have a meaningful voice in decisions that will reshape their homes, streets and communities?
No single neighborhood, constituency or political viewpoint can answer those questions alone. They require a citywide conversation.
CCC has always drawn strength from people who know their neighborhoods firsthand. Our board and advisory committee include residents from across Cambridge, allowing us to learn directly from East Cambridge, Riverside, Cambridgeport, Kerry’s Corner, Strawberry Hill, North Cambridge, Cambridge Highlands, The Port and many other communities.
That local knowledge helps reveal larger patterns. A development policy introduced in one area may soon affect another. Decisions about parks, sewers, schools, streets, trees, transit and infrastructure are often made one project at a time, even though their cumulative effects are citywide. CCC helps residents compare experiences, share information and advocate for fairer, more effective policies.
Our new website makes those connections easier to see. It provides a cleaner, more accessible home for CCC’s research, public comments, policy proposals, videos and frequent blog posts. It also highlights timely work by researchers, journalists, public agencies and civic organizations in Cambridge and beyond, including current research on housing and other major city issues.
Housing and affordability will remain central to our work, but they are inseparable from governance, the environment, transportation, schools and community life.
CCC supports adding housing throughout Cambridge. In 2021, we became the first Cambridge citizens’ group to submit a zoning petition allowing multifamily housing in every neighborhood. The Advancing Housing Affordability petition, also known as the Donovan petition, aimed to expand housing opportunities while keeping affordability at the center. Although the City Council did not adopt it, the proposal remains prominently featured on our new site.
We also working to improve Cambridge’s newer Multifamily Housing zoning ordinance. Our position is not that Cambridge should resist growth. It is that growth should deliver the public benefits used to justify it.
New zoning should produce meaningful affordable housing, address tenant and small-business displacement, protect trees and open space, strengthen climate resilience and account for the capacity of public infrastructure. Affordability cannot be measured only by the number of units built. We must also ask who can afford them, what homes are being lost, who is displaced and whether redevelopment is broadening opportunity or accelerating gentrification.
CCC’s goal is to create a larger civic space where renters, homeowners, families, older residents, students, small-business owners, environmental advocates, neighborhood leaders and future residents can meet, learn and help shape practical solutions.
Cambridge Citywide Coalition is a new name and a renewed commitment. Our neighborhoods are distinct, but their futures are connected. We believe Cambridge’s hardest challenges will be met most successfully when residents work across neighborhood boundaries – and when growth, affordability, environmental stewardship, community well-being and accountable government are treated as shared citywide goals.
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