Committee members stress that the report is meant to serve as a framework for communication, rather than a specific trouble-shooter.

And the document does call for several definite actions on the part of the city and the universities, Shattuck says.

It advocates the preparation of a separate Growth Policy Document by 1992 to address city-wide and neighborhood growth and development issues such as land use, traffic and parking, and open space planning.

The growth document would probably set up Harvard's Red Line--a barrier agreed upon in 1972 to prevent Harvard expansion into residential neighborhoods--as a model for Cambridge's other educational institutions, says John R. Pitkin, a committee member and chair of the mid-Cambridge Neighborhood Association.

In addition, the report suggests that Cambridge and its universities consider pursuing increased state and federal aid for communities and their host universities.

"Such assistance would be recognition of the benefits, fiscal and otherwise, that are provided by the universities to the state and nation, and of the significance to these educational institutions of the municipal services provided by their host communities," the document states.

The publication also urges that a university database be developed to provide the city with accurate annual records of population and housing use, periodic growth projections and transportation studies.

But the bulk of the 44-page document is devoted to much more general suggestions for improving communications between the city and its colleges and universities.

And there are limitations to what the committee can do even with these specific recommendations unless they establish a more complete staff representation, Duehay says.

Committee members holding full-time jobs as university or city officials simply may not have time to really concentrate on implementing the issues raised in the report, Duehay adds.

The current town-gown committee has no full-time or paid members, and there has been no discussion of establishing a stipend for future members, Mayor Wolf says.

"If you want to get away from just rhetoric, you have to pay people to really think things through," Duehay says. "You need people with lots of time and technical knowledge."

Duehay also says he questions whether the document provides accurate statistics for counting university students.

He points to the 20,000 Harvard School of Continuing Education students who commute each week to Harvard Square and thereby contribute to traffic and congestion. These students are not counted under the report's current tallies, Duehay says.

"The whole business of adult education wasn't really very well understood by the committee," Duehay says. "It's a much more vibrant community than those figures would suggest."