Imagine a warm summer night in the not too distant future, strolling along a canal in Allston as the cheers of parents at a neighborhood baseball game reach your ears from not far away.

Imagine continuing your relaxing walk, north along a grassy pathway toward the Charles River. You barely notice the noise from cars passing under your feet as the path takes you over a sunken Soldiers Field Road.

Seventy-five trees recently were planted along North Harvard Street in an effort to improve the look and feel around Harvard property in Allston. The trees and other landscape improvements are the first in a series of Harvard-funded community enhancements and programs that were announced by the city of Boston and Harvard University this past winter. (Staff photo Kris Snibbe/Harvard News Office)

You walk to the river's edge where a family of ducks float a few feet from shore, while members of Harvard's crew push their long, slender boat gracefully past. They row around a bend in the river leaving you momentarily alone. Now it's decision time:

Do you walk up river, or down river?

Harvard's Allston planning firm, Cooper, Robertson and Partners has been doing a lot of imagining over the past school year.

Their interim report includes options that would advance the University's commitment to sustainable development as they transform Allston's industrial lands into a place with more plants, more fields, more trees, and better access to them.

All that greenery could be interwoven with new, striking water features. Cooper, Robertson and Partners propose a canal or pond that will not only create a unique sense of place, but also help to manage problematic storm water and drain soggy Harvard playing fields and the community's Smith Field.

Though the Cooper, Robertson interim report presents options, not concrete plans, Harvard officials are confident that their plans will help result in a greening of Allston.

That greening will occur in two senses, both a visual one, as asphalt is replaced with the lawns and plantings that will accompany Harvard buildings, and in an environmental one, as the University's development is guided by the sustainability principles adopted last October.

While it is premature to talk about specific building plans and features, it is nevertheless apparent that, when it comes to its existing asphalt parking lots and current industrial uses, the neighborhood will be changing.

"We're talking about the transforming asphalt to a green and lively landscape," McGregor said. "We're going to try, wherever we can, to make pathways sheltered with trees, with evergreens."

Read related Gazette articles in the special Allston: Interim Report 2005 The Allston Initiative Web site is located at www.allston.harvard.edu. The Allston Initiative is committed to keeping the Harvard community and its neighbors informed about what is going on in Allston. Visit the site to learn more about Allston, current events, and the vision for Harvard's development.

The options unveiled in the report will encourage walking and biking as part of an integrated transportation system that will also feature mass transit links to Cambridge and Longwood, as well as improved automobile access to the area.

One option would create a dedicated bicycle lane on North Harvard Street to reserve sidewalks for pedestrians, while another would create indoor space on the Lars Anderson bridge to encourage walkers and bikers by sheltering them from the weather - perhaps even creating space for kiosks to serve coffee and snacks to pedestrians.

Other options would reconnect Allston with what is perhaps its greatest natural resource: the Charles River. With busy Soldiers Field Road cutting the neighborhood off from the river and the substantial parkland lining it, Cooper, Robertson and Partners examined a variety of options, including one that would depress portions of Soldiers Field Road at two sites, near the Weeks Footbridge and the Newell Boat House.

McGregor said that incorporating environmentally sustainable designs into buildings is a task for the next phase of planning, but said there has been some consideration of building orientation into this framework phase, with the understanding that proper siting will allow buildings to maximize their south facing in order to take advantage of the sun's warmth, particularly in the winter months and to shade in the summertime.

The Allston development - this phase and those in the future - will be guided by Harvard's six sustainability principles, adopted in October 2004. The principles commit the University to being a responsible environmental steward and to exhibiting that stewardship in its development planning and building operations, in Allston and elsewhere.

Harvard already has taken many steps to reduce its negative impact on the environment, including increasing its trash recycling rate, running its entire fleet of diesel vehicles on cleaner-burning bio-diesel fuel, and becoming one of the nation's largest university purchasers of renewable energy.

"Operating our campus in an environmentally sustainable way is not only the right thing to do as a citizen and neighbor, it is also an economically sound way to conduct our business," President Summers said when the principles were announced.

As a part of the implementation of the principles, a sustainability consultant is working with Cooper, Robertson and Partners as they develop guidelines for future development of Harvard's Allston sites. Those principles ensure that, though many decisions remain ahead, the area will certainly change.

"A metamorphosis is required," the report says, "to a green, welcoming, environmentally-conscious area of the campus that ties seamlessly with athletics and the Business School, and is a good neighbor to Allston residents."

The Cooper plan envisions green spaces replacing the asphalt lots that exist today.