One of the most politically active residents in Cambridge, City Council candidate John Pitkin is out to protect the city’s neighborhoods.

“City government is, regrettably, out of touch with a lot of residents,” Pitkin says. “Cambridge is changing rapidly, and I’m concerned that it could become a city that is no longer a city of neighborhoods.”

Pitkin’s ties to neighborhood issues are strong, as he has organized and led neighborhood and citywide efforts for the last three decades. He has been both an active participant in discussions with city and University officials, and sometimes a thorn in their side as he has worked to protect neighborhood interests.

Most recently, he has led residents against Harvard’s attempts to build the proposed Center for Government and International Studies, formerly known as the Knafel Center, right next to his Mid-Cambridge neighborhood. The project has undergone numerous redesigns, and still needs City Council appoval.

And so after holding numerous non-elected positions, Pitkin is now a serious contender in a field of 19 candidates vying for nine City Council seats.

Born in New York, Pitkin graduated from Columbia University with a degree in economics, and then briefly studied and lived in Europe during the 1960s. He currently works as a demographer out of an office in Harvard Square.

Unlike many of his generation who were moved to political activism by the turbulent events in the United States in the ’60s, Pitkin found a different inspiration: the Soviet takeover of the former Czeckoslovakia in 1968, which he witnessed while living in Prague.

“That gave me a very deep appreciation for how important democracy is,” Pitkin says. “Not just in the sense of there being a system of elections, but it [being] a way of life.”

So when Pitkin and his wife settled in Cambridge in the early 1970s, he immediately became active in his community.

He helped co-found the Mid-Cambridge Neighborhood Association (MCNA) in 1975, and has been president of the association, which is made up of 600 households, since 1986.

“He’s in touch with everything that’s going on and affecting the neighborhood,” says Keren Schlomy, acting president of the MCNA while Pitkin is running for a council seat.

On a citywide level, Pitkin has served on the Democratic City Committee, the Cambridge Board of Traffic and Parking and the Cambridge Transportation Forum, which included public participation in the planning and design of the extension of the Red Line to Alewife in the mid-1970s.

Zoning has been a key focus for Pitkin, who brought forth the Pitkin Petition in 1997, initiating a citywide rezoning process that is just now nearing completion.

Pitkin says his involvement on different levels is a product of a desire to improve and protect his surroundings.

“I’ve always seen it as something that I was personally committed to,” he says.