New Town-Gown report from Harvard

Harvard's 2007 Cambridge Town-Gown report is now online. Boston doesn't require any annual reports like these, but it would be nice if it did. The information in this report is specific to Cambridge, but it offers some interesting contrasts and comparisons with Harvard's Allston plans.

For example, Harvard has 4,536 parking spaces in Cambridge. Harvard's Allston Master Plan proposes creating 7,345 spaces in Allston.

On page 31 Harvard describes its efforts "to maintain full occuapancy in its Harvard Square retail properties" and that "when vacancies occur [Harvard] strives to bring in unique, independently owned businesses that serve the needs of the surrounding community". Hopefully some day Harvard's Allston/Brighton properties will get the same treatment.

This quote by President Faust has interesting implications for Harvard's new Allston campus, though the bridges may be internal ones between different parts of Harvard, not between Harvard and its surrounding communities:

"From engineering to theater, from interdisciplinary science to art to law, an in innumerable fields around in between, we have opportunities not just to advance our efforts in discrete fields, but to work to become a university known more for bridges and less for walls."