University May Aid City In Face-Lifting Project

Cambridge's City Planning Board will ask the University and M.I.T., in early December, to join with municipal authorities and local citizens in pressing for speedy realization of the city's planned face-lifting.

In addition, both universities' city planning departments may supervise blue-printing of Cambridge's urban renewal plan, although the actual drafting will be done by graduate planners, Reginald R. Isaacs, chairman of the School of Design's City Planning Department, said yesterday. Isaacs himself is one of the originators of the urban renewal concept.

President Pusey and President James Killian of M.I.T. have been invited to a dinner meeting with the municipal planning board and local business leaders to discuss the best way to get prompt action on urban renewal. Many citizens of Cambridge feel that the University and M.I.T. should join the city in setting up a permanent committee to deal with other major problems--traffic, housing, schools, etc.--and to coordinate action now and in the future. "If Harvard, M.I.T. and the city don't work together, we might as well give the whole works back to the Indians," one local businessman said.

Prompt Action Sought

Getting prompt action on urban renewal is the immediate concern of the city planners. The federal government approved Cambridge as a site for the project earlier this year, but the urban renewal committee, which must now be formed to plan specific areas for redevelopment, has not yet been set up by the city government.

The purpose of the early December meeting is, as Frederick J. Adams, head of the M.I.T. City Planning Department, put it yesterday, "to light a fire under" the municipal authorities and get the urban renewal committee set up. Any joint action on this issue may well lead to a permanent University-M.I.T.-citizens committee to press for other improvements where the institutions and citizens have joint interests.

May Advise Blueprinting

Issacs and Adams agreed that their departments would not be able to undertake actual planning duties, but would be pleased to advise the city in its blueprinting. The University and M.I.T. have been accused of failing to cooperate with the city in past planning, a charge vigorously denied by members of the City Council and by Ferdinand Rousseve, chairman of the City Planning Board.

Some city planners envisaged a permanent local committee, similar to the one in Chicago where the University of Chicago and the municipal government cooperate, through a joint committee, in local projects.