The student, Eduardo Cadaval, proposed renovating and widening the Anderson bridge to incorporate shops and fountains and cafes into one, big, bustling streetscape, running into a bridge akin to Florence’s famous Ponte Vecchio, where art, gold, and silver have been bought and sold since the 16th century.

Cadaval says he envisions a wide range of transportation, ranging from walking to driving, as well as brand new electric “tram,” or streetcar, bringing people back and forth between Harvard’s campuses.

His prototypes show the currently drab North Harvard Street converted into a boulevard modeled on the Champs-Elysées that would run into a much-discussed “Allston Square”—currently the site of two gas stations and a convenience store, but one day, many hope, a lively rival to Harvard Square.

“This plaza would run from Harvard Square to the new proposed Allston Square, transforming the current streets into a public corridor that would integrate different activities and programs in a single space and that would help to change the perception and image of the Allston area,” Cadaval writes in an e-mail.

While Cadaval’s plan for Allston might sound so ambitious that only an optimistic student could dream it up, Harvard administrators, too, have been known to encourage big, sweeping thinking for Allston.

In 1999, Harvard even brought in famously zany Dutch architect and GSD professor Rem Koolhaas to come up with radical ideas for Harvard’s new Allston acreage.

He decided Harvard didn’t need the bridge at all—they needed to literally make Allston and Cambridge one by diverting the course of the Charles River.

According to the Boston Globe, Koolhaas dubbed his plan “the Moses project” in homage to both the legendarily powerful urban planner Robert D. Moses and the biblical prophet who parted the Red Sea and led the Israelites to the Promised Land.

Harvard tried to avoid controversy by keeping the proposal under wraps. “He was intentionally hired to get University planners to think outside the box,” explains Spiegelman of Koolhaas. “But he did it in a way that we felt might be misunderstood by the public, especially because we were so anxious to establish a credible relationship with the community.”

Even though the Koolhaas dream might have gone a little too far, other University architects are still hoping that Harvard will seize the opportunity to dramatically revitalize local landscape and transit systems.

For his part, Chair of GSD Planning and Design Krieger, who is on the faculty committee for housing, hopes that Harvard officials will push for the oft-mentioned dream of an “urban ring” subway or light rail line around Boston.

Such a line would link the red line to a station across the river, connecting Harvard Square to Allston, Boston University, and the Longwood Medical Center, and would connect the outer fingers of all the other T lines so that travellers would no longer have to go into the center of Boston in order to switch T lines.

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

Familiar with the already-weak connection between Cambridge and the Longwood, campus several professors in Cambridge say they worry they will face a similar fate if moved to Allston.

“Longwood provides a high number of jobs to people all over the city, but they are lacking a good transportation link,” Krieger says.