Attend Cambridge meetings from Dec. 5-11: Tow-free street cleanings and green zoning

Instead of Affordable Housing Overlay revision, Cambridge needs affordable-housing strategy. The Cambridge City Council Housing Committee will discuss Wednesday a radical proposal to revise the Affordable Housing Overlay. The proposal, put forth in November by four city councilors – Marc McGovern, Burhan Azeem, E. Denise Simmons and Quinton Zondervan – is alarming. It would allow 13-story buildings on 13 corridors across the city, up to 25 stories in Porter, Harvard and Central squares, and would remove setback, parking and other current requirements.

Attend meetings in Somerville from Feb. 6-12: Route 16 traffic study, superintendent finalists. City Council Traffic and Parking Committee, 6 p.m. Monday. Councilors discuss a planned traffic study of the intersection of Route 16 and Broadway in West Somerville, a request from Green Cab to increase its rates and various neighborhood traffic-calming and curb-use proposals. Watchable by videoconferencing.

More Smart Boxes and anti-rat efforts coming, with East Somerville promised more attention. East Somerville can expect to get some of the rat-zapping “Smart Boxes” seen in other parts of the city after a Jan. 30 meeting at which councilors wondered at the omission. “It is really kind...

Demonstrators protest agenda filled with items they want: Review of Jan. 4 killing, police cams. Around 40 people protesting a police shooting disrupted Monday’s meeting of the City Council with concerns about how officers handle people in mental health crises and why they don’t wear body cameras – forcing officials to switch to a remote meeting format in which they handled a range of agenda items on those topics, including calling for an independent review of Cambridge police deescalation methods and for the city manager to take immediate steps to get body cameras on city law enforcement.

A week of events in Cambridge and Somerville, Beethoven to ‘Bittersweet’ art and Bitchcraft. Friends of the Somerville Public Library winter book sale from 1 to 4 p.m. at Somerville Public Library, 79 Highland Ave., on Central Hill. Free. Everything is $1. Information is here. The Hasty Pudding...

State of Small Business is still afflicted by Covid, Cambridge Local First finds in inaugural report. It’s becoming harder to own and operate a small business in Cambridge. The Covid pandemic, its resulting restrictions and challenges from e-commerce and seasonal rushes and lulls are all cited as stressors in Cambridge Local First’s first-ever State of Small Business report, released Jan. 29.

Cambridge’s Howard Industrial School of 1800s captures the conflict of Black women’s freedom. By the time of the Civil War, enslavement had been illegal under Massachusetts law for almost eight decades. But the end of formal enslavement for Black people in the state did not mean they were free from racial discrimination, or that Black residents enjoyed the same rights and protections afforded to their white neighbors. Even in a city such as Cambridge, with its relatively large number of antislavery organizations, racism was alive and well in the mid-19th century. People of color – those born in the North and those migrating here from other parts of the country – felt the effects of racial bias in their everyday lives. This race-based prejudice was compounded by gender bias for Black women. The freedwomen who ventured north in search of economic opportunity during and after the Civil War found themselves at a particular disadvantage.

Alewife parking mostly reopens Wednesday; Driver causing damage remains hospitalized. The parking garage at Alewife Station gets a partial reopening Wednesday after an emergency shutdown that followed a car crash last weekend. Garage levels G, 2, 3 and 4 will reopen to drivers while the top level – where a...

Alewife T station to be closed for at least a week after a garage car crash considered intentional (updated) A driver at the top of Cambridge’s Alewife parking garage crashed intentionally this weekend, injuring himself and one person far below in the T station lobby, officials said. MBTA spokesperson...