Green Line extension update

The mother and daughter have lived in their gray wood-shingle house on North Street since 1958, resettling here, like many Italian families, after decades in neighborhoods of Boston or Cambridge.

Down the block on Mystic Valley Parkway, Medford's newcomers - many of them fleeing expensive housing markets in Cambridge and Somerville - flood into the new Whole Foods, loading groceries and babies into Subarus and Honda Civics adorned with Obama stickers.

The two camps coexist peacefully in this close-in suburb of 56,000, but ask them about the planned extension of the MBTA's Green Line into their neighborhood and a big rift emerges.

"It's sort of divided among the newcomers and the old-timers who don't want to see it changed," said Gwen Blackburn, a retired school district administrator long active in the community.

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