Best Squares in Cambridge & Somerville

I put Kendall as the worst. Davis is hands down the best.
 
BostonUrbEx said:
I put Kendall as the worst. Davis is hands down the best.
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Me too........Harvard became too corporate. There is a bank on every major retail location. Its seems that Harvard is losing its character a little.

Its still a cool place to walk around.

Davis is the place to be.
I think Union might come on strong in the future.
 
When the GLX reaches Union Square it is going to be the best competition for Davis. Harvard Square died when the Wursthaus was torn down.
 
I'm hoping the Union Square Station gives Inman a boost as well.
 
Keep in mind Kendall does have a lot going for it once you get past the boring landscrapers and MIT labs.
 
That could also be phrased as, "Keep in mind Kendall does have a lot going for it if you stick to three blocks of Main Street."
 
Davis is superior to Harvard for reasons mentioned. My mother grew up in Cambridge in the 60s and 70s and loves Harvard Square. She goes to Davis now and says that it's what Harvard Square used to be, only smaller.

I'm surprised Union is so low. I wonder if it's simply because lots of outside of Somerville people don't know about, although you could say the same about Inman, and it's 3rd.

Why'd they group Ball Square and Teele Square? They aren't that close together. Shoulda done Teele alone, and done "Ball/Magoun Squares."

And no Lechmere?
 
To Kendall's credit, it's a player on the global scene, it has companies like Google coming to it. And I'm surprised Central is 4th, Central has the best music scene and has the craziest street level experience. It's like Manhattan in the sense that every walk of life is there and it's very busy. I've seen everything from legit pimps and ho's at Wendy's, to drunken middle aged dude resisting arrest insisting female cop rapes his g spot, to a crew of of guys riding those old bikes with the huge front wheels wearing clown suits.
 
Patrick said:
Central Square is great.
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Yeah, I love shirtless bums pissing on ATMs.

Seriously though -- it's like bums have taken over.

Also, I think the Wendys in Central closed. Thus making the square useless to me now. And putting Wendys out of my usual reach. </3
 
As a resident of Union Square (which is way hip) I would vote not on how edgy and locavore the businesses are, but on the quality of the pedestrian experience. If people don't want to sit on the benches, drink at the cafes, and window shop at the stores, then the square is a failure.

With that in mind, here's my ordering, based on pedestrian experience.

1. Davis
2. Harvard
3. Kendall (I actually like going to the Kendall area. CBC/Hungry Mother/movie theater/Area Four/Friendly Toast... Don't hate.)
4. Central (Bit dodgy, sure, but I like that both sides of the square are built up. It isn't lopsided, forcing folks to hug one side of the streetscape)
5. Union (Both Union and Inman suffer from lopsided squares. 75% of the activity is on their north sides, making it less of an integrated pedestrian space)
6. Inman
7. Ball (Best little square there is, with the best liquor store in the Commonwealth)
8. Magoun
9. Teele
10 and dead last by far. Porter
 
Porter gets a bad rep because of the strip mall, but it was necessary when first built, and serves a great purpose today. Plus there is a great amount of activity the hundreds of yards around the T station. It's more utilitarian than others, but not as bad as many i feel believe.
 
Davis is too sleepy and Inman even more so (and inaccessible), Union too incoherent, ugly, and out of the way. Harvard has never seem all that corporate to me, and I get kind of sick of people reminiscing about the place as if it were 1975. It's convenient to have certain amenities in Camb/Somerville somewhere.

Kendall is boring as hell. What attractions lie there (like the cinema and brewery complex nearby) are too far afield from the square itself.

Ball / Magoun / Teele? Maybe when these are integrated by Green Line, or if I went to Tufts, these would hold more interest for me, but for now they feel like suburban constellations to me.

Porter is permanently marred by its ungodly strip mall.

Central wins.
 
Davis is sleepy? It seems loud and busy when I walk through it in the evenings.
 
It's sleepy relative to Harvard and Central. Even Porter feels more active most of the time, although it's not as coherent from a pedestrian perspective. Whatever Davis' cool reputation (which, seriously, is this still Boston's coolest neighborhood 13 years after Utne Reader anointed it so? Boston changes so slowly), it never really did it for me as a sufficiently busy "urban" place; it feels like a typical meto Boston town center that just happens to have a little extra life because of its subway stop...Watertown Square-on-the-T.

Moody St. in Waltham feels more urban than Davis. I would love to see development in Davis transform it to a square at the level of Harvard and Central, which would actually justify a heavy rail stop, but local NIMBYs fear just that and complain about its "village" atmosphere eroding, which just goes to prove my point that it's sleepy.
 
We in Davis Square still have our first-run movie theatre (which also has live shows). Harvard Square doesn't, as of today.

Inman Square is a 10-minute walk from Central Square. I wouldn't really call that 'inaccessible'.
 
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