Cemeteries Top the List

Convents and monasteries are great, college and university laboratories are anathema. Ethnic and cultural heritage appreciation centers make the top of the list, while fraternities and sororities are near the bottom. And most desirable of all are cemeteries.

Cambridge's community development department has finished a preliminary draft of its strategy for controlling institutional expansion into the city's residential neighborhoods that contains priorities along these lines. And if the City Council passes the guidelines as currently drafted, Harvard expansion into the surrounding community would be virtually banned.

Should Harvard planners be able to find areas that are little used by institutions right now, the University would be allowed to build family housing for affiliates with relative ease under the guidelines.

But for anything else--laboratories, offices, dormitories, classrooms or athletic complexes--Harvard would either have to apply for a special permit or seek a very hard-to-get zoning variance.

That's where the ratings system comes in: using 32 criteria, the community development department has ranked types of development in descending order of objectionability.

Some of the ratings are a bit obvious. Since the average daily population of a cemetery, not to mention the total daily population and the peak instant population, are low, the department rated it the most desirable non-profit use for a neighborhood.

And some of the designations seem motivated at least in part by politics--"Ethnic and cultural heritage appreciation" is code for the Dante Alighieri Center, a pet project of powerful city councilor Alfred E. Vellucci, who has criticized institutional guidelines in the past when they seemed likely to limit his plans.

But the guidelines clearly reflect the antipathy towards Harvard (and to a lesser extent MIT, which is located nearer industrial than residential areas), and if adopted will mean serious changes for an institution that has been operating on a laissez-faire basis for 350 years.