Allston tidbits in the new Harvard Magazine

Faust was photographed during her first day in the office conferring with Christopher M. Gordon, chief operating officer of the Allston Development Group, on plans for the new campus.

Shortly thereafter, the president and the deans convened their first retreat, discussing how to conduct academic planning within each school and among them—and so to proceed on University priorities involving growth in the sciences, expansion in Allston, and, ultimately, a capital campaign to pay for everything.

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Robert Simha, who for 40 years was MIT’s head of planning, suggests that Harvard’s decentralized organization creates difficulties when it comes to community relations. Because each Harvard school is financially self-sustaining, the University can be reluctant to reveal plans for a specific site until the money is in hand and the project is viewed as “real.” But in the meantime, he adds, information about a project usually leaks out, increasing the distrust of community groups who may be affected.