The Harvard-M.I.T. Joint Center for Urban Studies has received $1.4 million from the Ford Foundation. The grant, which will extend over a period of seven years, continues the financial support that the Foundation has provided since the establishment of the Center.

Kevin A. Lynch, acting chairman of the faculty committee for the Center and professor of City Planning at M.I.T., said last night that the grant will give the Center "real continuity for the first time." This continuity, he explained, will allow the Center to engage in long-term research projects and will help attract more people to the Center.

An assistant to the director of the Center, Katherine Clark, said that the Center has not yet decided what new projects would be started with the new money, but that it would be used to continue present projects.

Since the Center was established in 1959, it has been supported by two three-year grants from the Ford Foundation. The new grant, according to Lynch, will provide an increase over the annual budget set by the last two grants.

The Center was established to encourage and support the study of urban problems of all kinds. It brings together scholars from a wide variety of fields including law, political science, economics, city planning and architecture, to concentrate upon the study of urban society.

The Center enables interested faculty members from Harvard and M.I.T. to organize urban studies by reimburaing the University for the time that the faculty spends away from their academic duties.

Besides supporting studies, the Center has been able to act in an advisory capacity for urban development. In 1961 the Center was asked to aid in the planning and development of a new city, Cludad Quayana, in what had been one of the least settled areas of Venezuela.