Part 2:  The Diaspora
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From the late 19^th Century onward, developers sought to build on every available parcel of Somerville land. More often than not, city officials accommodated them.

Combining this with the attractions of affordable housing, ethnic enclaves, and a thriving industrial economy made Somerville the most densely populated American city at the middle of the 20^th Century.

Its 160 manufacturing plants provided a worker with wages sufficient to support a family. Employees walked to their jobs or took the streetcar.  They and their families maintained a rich fabric of community based on neighborhoods, relationship networks, and scores of nongovernmental organizations.

This community fabric met social needs, provided real security, and was the medium for Somerville’s vibrant political culture.  But in the 1950s, two enormous market forces began unraveling it:  suburbia and the collapse of the city’s industrial base.

Reasons for the suburbs’ lure are well understood. But it is worth noting that those who left in search of privacy often found isolation.  Those fleeing congestion came to hemorrhage time and wellbeing in highway traffic. Those wanting to shed their working-class identity eventually lived through an era when American popular culture denied the existence of class, while the realities of class were becoming more brutal.

When the factories closed, workers took service, clerical, and sales jobs outside Somerville.  Those jobs rarely provided a wage sufficient for one worker to support a family. Now, eighty percent of us who have jobs must leave the city each day to work.

Somerville’s population dropped from 102,000 in 1950 to 77,000 in 1980.  This 25,000-person decline is dramatic by itself. But more than twice that number actually left, to be replaced by the succession of newcomer groups who are the subject of subsequent installments in this series.

Today, those in City Hall who advocate for increasing Somerville’s current stock of 34,000 housing units by another 10,000 units sometimes point to the thriving community life that the city enjoyed when 102,000 people lived here. The comparison is misleading for a variety of reasons.

The population difference between then and now is more than accounted for by the absence of children. As most parents will understand from experience, raising kids involves activities that establish connections among families and contribute to community.

And while Somerville had a lot more people in 1950, it had a lot fewer housing units. Housing density poses challenges that differ from those posed by population density, including fiscal constraints.

As manufacturing plants closed, zoning and planning decisions based on the influence of the well connected, rather than on sound development policy, converted factories to housing.  The names of the well connected appear in campaign finance reports going back for as long as those records have been kept.

Housing creates as much as twice commercial properties’ municipal costs, but pays only 60% of commercial properties’ tax rate. Among those municipal costs, the largest is schools. Yet Somerville was able to educate so many more students than it does today because of its extensive commercial tax base.

As residential property replaced commercial property, the City was forced onto welfare, reaching one point when more of its budget came from state aid than from property taxes.

The 1950 Somerville of 102,000 residents also had a much more extensive public transportation system than today’s Somerville does, along with fewer automobiles and less congestion.

And every neighborhood had stores in easy walking distance where one could buy life’s necessities and encounter acquaintances. Revitalizing neighborhood commercial districts relies on bringing back daytime populations, not building more housing units.

With the population changes came political changes. Somerville’s interweaving relationship networks had provided an effective medium for rapid communication of issues that mattered to people.  In family gatherings, veterans’ posts, union halls, church groups, fraternal organization, ethnic clubs, and neighborhoods people discussed the issues of the day.

The diaspora took away many who had formed the substance of organizational life.  Economic demands requiring two breadwinners and daily commuting reduced time available for neighborly interaction.  ‘Villens increasingly used their scant spare time to soothe increased stress with television’s balm. Relationship networks withered.  Neighbors stopped sitting on their stoops.

Those networks had not only been the medium for political discussion and understanding.  They had been the medium for political action.  Advertising replaced organizing.  Spin replaced individual and personal accountability by political leaders.  Information reaching voters got sketchier, often coming too late to make a difference.

Political participation declined across the board.  Into the early 1980s, alderman-at-large elections brought out as many as twenty candidates. Today, there are more uncontested than contested aldermanic races. And since the current mayor was first elected, he has never faced a serious challenger.

As a group, those of old Somerville who remained after the diaspora worked disproportionately in positions that afforded job security, such as in the government, utility, and education sectors. One explanation is that they tended to be more risk averse than those who left. Another is that there just weren’t many other solid jobs remaining in the local economy.

They also voted more consistently than any group that came after them. Until the last couple of city elections, they were often decisive as a voting block. Although they were less than unanimous in the candidates that they supported, they shared formative experiences.

In the 2003 election a solid majority of them voted to elect Joe Curtatone, who represented himself as both one of them and as a progressive reformer, depending on the audience. Their support for the mayor has gradually eroded, that erosion accelerating about five years ago.

They see long-time neighbors priced and taxed out of their homes and the city.  They see a local economy that cannot give their kids living-wage employment.  They see affluent newcomers, many of whom are slow to contribute to the community.  They come by their disaffection and estrangement honestly.

The first major factory closing came in 1958 at Ford Motor Company’s Edsel plant in Assembly Square. It eliminated 1,100 jobs.  The same year, a volcanic eruption 3,000 miles away would have an effect on Somerville’s changing peoples and political culture.