Harvard's proposed plans for the Agassiz neighborhood significantly reduce the scale of future development, proposing to reduce the maximum allowable height of new buildings from 120 feet to 45 feet. Homes in the abutting residential neighborhood currently have a 35-foot maximum allowable height.
"We're essentially down-zoning ourselves," Power said.
Harvard also wants to create transition "buffers" between the institutional buildings and lower-scale residential areas in order to reduce the effects of development on neighborhoods. These include landscape setbacks, sloped building transition planes, and transition zoning districts between residential and institutional areas.
Harvard Professor of Economics Edward L. Glaeser, who lives in the Agassiz neighborhood, echoed Pitkin's praise of Harvard's work involving the Agassiz and Banks Street areas.
"They have done an extraordinary job of addressing the neighbors' feelings," Glaeser said. "It has been very pleasing to everyone."
The Allston Question
"No matter how successful we are at developing the edges, the land in Cambridge won't last," Spiegelman says.
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