However, Milne says middle-income housing is necessary if only to achieve a proper social "mix and balance." While Petrocelly points to U.S. census figures showing 5000 units of substandard housing in Cambridge, Milne says, "In the past six years, four out of five new housing units built in Cambridge have been subsidized, low income units. In terms of balance, it's time for more middle-income units. You have to look at the total picture of what Cambridge has been doing."

It is just this "total picture" of Cambridge that both sides are so worried about. Advocates of the Neighborhood Plan see Kendall Square turning into an ugly and dangerous "industrial wasteland" that should be cleaned up with wealth producing development.

Critics of the plan say that MIT is trying to turn Cambridge into a "luxury city" by forcing blue collar workers out of their jobs and houses.

Development of Kendall Square is crucial for both sides, because it is, in many ways, the heart of East Cambridge. Located at the foot of the Longfellow Bridge and above a major stop on the MBTA, it is a gateway to the wealth that looms in the massive buildings in downtown Boston directly across the Charles.

Nestled between the laboratories of MIT and the small factories that are the lifeblood of the East Cambridge working-class neighborhoods, it is also caught between two strange bed-fellows who coexist in an uneasy, often antagonistic truce.

Kendall Square's 24 barren acres are an unfortunate byproduct of this truce, and it will take many months of angry fighting over bids from developers, zoning changes, and environmental studies on housing and industry before the heart of Cambridge can start beating again.