By Steve Provizer

We are understandably upset when market forces threaten the things we consider to be sacred.

Harvard Square: A Love Story by Catherine J. Turco. Columbia University Press, 344 pages, $27.95.

Harvard Square veterans inevitably utter the same lament: “The Square is not what it used to be.” Author Catherine J. Turco demonstrates that it was ever the case — from the felling of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s spreading chestnut tree to widen a road in the 1840s to the current domination of international chain stores on Brattle Street. Harvard Square: A Love Story combs through 19th- and 20th-century newspaper archives and the annals of various Harvard Square business associations to prove that Harvard Square has always been “not what it used to be.”

My own salad days in the Square were in the ’60s and ’70s, so for many decades I’ve had the opportunity to bemoan the changes I’ve seen. This is what drew me to the book — I wanted to try and understand why this place inspired such an emotional connection.

For Turco, economists undervalue the emotional attachment we have to marketplaces, while sociologists examine our irrational passion for marketplaces but end up missing their economic importance. By looking at history, facts on the ground, and individual experiences, her study attempts to fill that gap.

From the outset, Turco refers to Harvard Square (H.S. from now on) as a marketplace, and initially that made feel defensive. Surely the venerable location is more than that. But, as I read on, I began to understand that my startled reaction proved the author’s point — we establish intense emotional relationships with our marketplaces. She cites an expression in Andre Aciman’s novel Harvard Square: “magical after love.” The marketplace functions on many levels, she argues, including providing a “sense of agency and intentionality.”

The author gives us the history of the battles surrounding various H.S. projects, including the JFK Library (which ended up in Dorchester), the (losing) battle surrounding the building that housed “The Tasty,” a small, beloved diner in the middle of H.S (you can see Federico Muchnik’s documentary about The Tasty here), and the struggle of a couple of small businesses to survive.

Over the years, Cambridge Brahmins, students, beatniks, hippies, street people, buskers, and small-business owners have taken up a common cause. They have wanted to “protect” their particular vision of H.S. The “conservative” element, aka the business community, is in favor of meeting changing consumer needs and desires through renovation, replacing facades, and new construction. The “radical” element — H.S. Defense Fund and other activists — are dead set against such innovations. Of course, this confusing welter of voices represents competing world views and class categories. Some are afraid that more fast-food options and liquor licenses will draw the riffraff. Some are the supposed riffraff.

My heart is with the Bohemians, but the question must be asked: What happens to the street life of a place like H.S. if outsiders can’t get what they want? Will tourists stop being drawn to the marketplace? Buskers are not going to survive on what students and Brattle Street patrons give them, nor are small-business owners.

Turco explains that a “commercial property market” underlies all the businesses in the marketplace. She is thorough in showing how transformation has dominated over “stability.” New methods of merchandising, distribution, and manufacturing have inevitably compelled business adjustments. Changes in hair styles and fashion, the threat of fires, and shifts in eating habits have also made considerable impact. Technology, of course, has been powerful; no more so than in the Internet era. Here local readers must acknowledge how they shape the nature of H.S. We say we believe in local businesses, but how conscientious are we about patronizing neighborhood vendors? Are we going back to movie theaters? How often do we go online to buy books and records, rather than purchase these at brick and mortar stores? In fact, the Harvard Square area has the highest percentage of online book sales of any area in the country. It may not be the only factor, but this certainly suggests why so many H.S. bookstores have disappeared.

Author Catherine J. Turco.

The story may be local, but H.S. has always drawn an international crowd. Today, the major players in H.S. real estate are increasingly global in scope and the result is enormous. Historically, personal interchanges on the retail level were valued for an essential reason: they built relationships that, from the vendor’s perspective, created the personal bonds that were likely to lead to long-term, stable sales. To companies with an international profile, retail is all about branding. It simply doesn’t matter to Ray-Ban, Warby Parker, or Patagonia if you buy from a store or online. The financial viability of a company is not tied to one outlet, but to a vast array of global income sources.

Some of these companies/brands have been bought by equity and hedge funds which, in return for the capital they provide, expect a dependable level of profitability for stockholders. This has various ramifications. There is little incentive for these firms to rent commercial space to tenants who are deemed to be “undesirable.” What’s more, if they rent at a lower rate, that might well lower the estimated value of their property. Also, when looking for a tenant, the pool they draw from is less likely to include a local business entrepreneur than a high-profile business that operates on an international scale.

This scenario conjures up the least savory aspects of capitalism, but bear in mind that many of the investors in these holding companies include an array of pension funds, including one that may be supporting the retirement of your parents — or you. The head spins.

I doubt anyone thinks about their connection with H.S. on mercantile terms. The Square is about the people you hang with: the ambience of a coffee shop, the alley where you stole a kiss. But another kind of relationship is dramatized in this book, and points out a discomforting truth. We are all consumers — participants in the capitalist system. Unless we are off the grid — and very few of us are — we vote with our feet, and our credit cards.

I didn’t begin reading this book believing that my emotional connection to Harvard Square was rooted in its role as a marketplace. But it’s a reasonable explanation for the perpetual dissatisfaction with changes in the Square. We are upset when market forces threaten the things we think are sacred. Turco hammers the point home: “That which gives us a sense of ontological security also takes it away. Who wouldn’t get upset by that?”

Steve Provizer writes on a range of subjects, most often the arts. He is a musician and blogs about jazz here.