“We have a severe space crunch...it’s a matter even of survival,” Professor of Bioengineering and Physiology Jeffrey J. Fredberg said in September.

From a physical planning perspective, moving to Allston is a “no-brainer,” according to Associate Dean of Administration and Operations Paul S. Riccardi.

“It makes all the sense in the world,” he said.

The education school faces a similar space crunch at its Garden Street campus.

“Generally speaking, we want to move to Allston,” Dean Ellen Condliffe Lagemann said in an interview last spring. “Our physical plant is currently constraining what we want to do. We really need new space.”

She said a dire need for more classrooms is holding the school back.

“We have classes where some students must sit on the floor,” Lagemann wrote in an October e-mail. “The list [of space needs] is long.”

The professional schools’ task force report also suggests fostering interschool collaboration, potentially through programs aimed at promoting leadership, and constructing a shared conference center that could host executive education programs and University-wide events.

FORGING A CAMPUS

Professors and students have long insisted that if they are to move, the University must make a commitment to building a lively commercial presence in Allston around the campus of the future.

The Allston life group endorsed the idea of encouraging retail along North Harvard Street and other major Allston roadways.

It recommended improving existing shuttle services and river crossings and suggested considering building a new bridge, installing a tram, creating a rail line from Allston to the Longwood medical campus in Boston or enhancing the bridge on John F. Kennedy Street to become a “Ponte Vecchio on the Charles,” to mirror the historic shop-lined Florentine bridge.

Thompson, who led the committee, said last month that while some of the options may seem unlikely, the committee only put its weight behind plans that were “win-win.”

“We put them there because we think they really will have benefits for the community as well as for Harvard,” he said. “We didn’t put any options that we thought a reasonable member of the community would reject.”

He added that the committee was very impressed by a potential SMRTram vehicle that could hold 60 people and run both ways in an eight-foot-wide lane.