“Harvard’s plan properly considered might shorten the time we have to wait for urban ring,” he said.

But, when it came time for the audience to weigh in, Associate Professor of Urban Design Richard A. Marshall challenged the idea that a new T line would be an unconditional good.

“You are making an assumption that connection is always a good thing,” he said.

Another student presentation involved creating a “science hub” in Allston, which is one of the scenarios for development across the river that high-level University planners say they are considering.

Here, too, Marshall raised qualms about what Harvard expansion would mean for the community where the University is moving in.

“You’re very quiet on the issue of gentrification,” he said. “It’s a phenomenon that’s going to happen.”

To Marshall issues of connecting communities and worrying about what happens to them as big institutions take over are not new. In 1999 he led a GSD studio class that considered options for Harvard’s Allston property, and he said the timing of his studio—just two years after Harvard disclosed it had spent the last decade buying 100 acres of land in Allston—meant that politics shared the stage with planning.

“Tensions were very raw between the BRA, Harvard, and the community,” Marshall said.

This year, with relations largely mended between Harvard and Allston community leaders, many presentations took a long view on planning issues without the added pressure of turmoil between the University and its prospective hosts.

In her presentation GSD student Connie Chung focused on long-term housing needs. She proposed that all of Harvard’s 30 acres in Watertown, as well as much of its undeveloped Allston property, should be devoted to creating no fewer than 4,700 housing units for faculty, students and even some residents.

Chung also put one of the most oft-mentioned candidates for a cross-river move—Harvard Law School—on Allston land and managed to make it more than fit.

“I took the Law School and I doubled that in size so you can see there’s more than enough room,” she said.

For now the plans offered last Tuesday in Gund Hall remain only the speculations of their creators. Although Harvard administrators have said a new campus could be underway within a decade, for now plans for Allston remain undecided—a reality that course leader Krieger readily acknowledged.

“It’s tough thinking about Harvard a generation from now and all its campuses,” he said.

—Staff writer Lauren R. Dorgan can be reached at dorgan@fas.harvard.edu.