CAMBRIDGE, Mass. _ Three days into her term as mayor, Sumbul Siddiqui sat behind an empty desk facing a full plate of challenges. She was tired.
Her small city, a mash-up of Colonial-era buildings and cutting-edge enterprises, would be the envy of just about anywhere.
Crime is low, riches spill from the treasury, businesses clamor to move in and workers are handsomely paid to help cure disease and invent the future. The population, which peaked in 1950, is rapidly growing again.
But amid all the prosperity something feels amiss. There is a gnawing sense that Cambridge is steadily gaining stature but slowly losing its soul.
More than half of its roughly 120,000 residents struggle to find affordable housing. The middle class is shrinking, along with the black and Asian populations. Local landmarks are being torn down or snapped up by wealthy investors with an eye on more lucrative use.
Elizabeth Warren, the ex-Harvard law professor and current Massachusetts senator and Democratic presidential hopeful, needn't venture far from her white-trimmed 1890 Victorian to see the economic struggles and income inequality at the core of her White House bid.
Cambridge, home to some of the most educated and opinionated people on Earth, is where the former Republican became a left-leaning Democrat, believing an activist government _ far from burdensome _ has a role to play as life's leveler, smoothing the ruts and deciding what is fair and just. It could be the unofficial motto of her hometown.
Provide legal aid to immigrants facing deportation? Deploy social workers instead of cops to fight homelessness? Build zero-carbon schools to fight global warming?
City Hall has a plan for that.
Much tougher is finding a way to balance Cambridge's growing good fortune with the disruption and displacement unleashed by so much success.
Back in the mayor's office, unadorned save for a spray of flowers, Siddiqui reflected on the tension between what had been and what has come to pass.
She arrived in Cambridge with her parents, Pakistani immigrants, when she was 2 years old. She was raised in public housing and, after college, moved back in with her folks _ a shipping clerk, a supermarket checker _ so she could attend law school. At age 31, she is Massachusetts' first Muslim mayor.
After a whirlwind of celebration and back-to-back meetings, Siddiqui reflected on her journey to City Hall, the kind of inspirational arc celebrated when we speak of this land as one of opportunity. It's become far less attainable, the mayor believes, for someone growing up without privilege in today's Cambridge.
"I think it's a great city," she said on a cold January morning, to the accompaniment of birdsong outside her third-floor window. "But it has changed tremendously. It's become very hard to live here."
