Harvard's Allston Expansion

As Harvard University and its partners pursue ambitious development projects in Allston, Massachusetts,, residents fear that their neighborhood-which they describe as uniquely hospitable to families, immigrants, and artists-will come to look a lot like Boston’s Seaport district: a sterile landscape of laboratory buildings and luxury housing that skews wealthy and white. Wary as they are of a Seaport imitation, area residents see great potential in the hundreds of acres Harvard is poised to transform: “It’s a blank canvas: the envy of any urban planner,” Tim McHale said. “The dreamscape is here in front of us.” Residents just don’t want the opportunity to be squandered: according to Jessica Robertson, “We have one chance to get it right. And so with this huge opportunity, there’s also huge stakes.”
Read more in the article, "Seeing Allston Whole," by Juliet Isselbacher: www.harvardmagazine.com/2021/...

[@ericdunn5412]

Is Whelan's vision of the community dependent on single family housing? It sounds like it is. Not sure how Harvard expanding its academic footprint, but not building market rate housing for its workers, would be any better. You'd simply have more Harvard employees needing a place to live nearby, forcing out existing residents.
Instead they're replacing an auto body shop and a closed skating rink. Yes more affordable housing is necessary but it doesn't sound like this is forcing a lot of displacement right now.

[@torguttormsyvertsen9088]

"Of course nobody cares what the people who actually do the work might want or need. Chief executives exult in bold architectural statements, and universities find it easier to raise money for new buildings than for research."
-Tim Harford

[@DanElton]

this video presents a very silly way of looking at things and the anti-tech, anti-Harvard, anti-construction skew of the piece left a sour taste in my mouth. The new Harvard buildings are largely being built on fallow lots that were previously dormant ugly fields. Now they are building beautiful buildings where students will learn important engineering skills yet the host makes it sound like this is a bad thing.
What the area needs is more high-rise apartments, not less. Otherwise housing costs will continue to skyrocket as the great migration from rural areas into cities, where all the jobs are, continues. Are locals seriously worried because Stadium Auto Body might be replaced by apartments or was that just invented whole-cloth for this video?
High rise apartments house a lot of people who want to move to the area on a very small footprint. The alternative would be higher housing costs as people compete for the tiny supply of existing housing.

[@ctirella]

0 character transient hellhole