Looking south away from Cambridge reveals a small residential community within a bustling city. Residential side streets cut across the commercial main drags. Three-family homes—painted white, yellow, mint green—line the streets and many have children’s toys in their postage-stamp lawns. Birds chirp above the ever-present sounds of the Mass. Turnpike, which was cut through Allston in the early 1960s.

Three television stations are headquartered in Allston, including WGBH, which sits partially on Harvard-owned land and has worked out a deal to relocate and sell the rest of its property to the University.

Right now, Allston is very flat, with no hills and few buildings that exceed three stories in height. This is the neighborhood of old warehouses, chain-link fences and rail yards where—within a decade—Harvard could begin to build its new campus of taller and more distinctive academic, administrative and dorm buildings.

For the time being, the University’s plans remain unclear.

Initially, as Harvard began secretly buying up more property in Allston in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, land across the river had been considered a place where overflow dorms and relocated museums could ease the space crunch on the Cambridge campus. These initial dealings were conducted in secret and when the news broke, there was an uproar in the community.

Lately plans for Allston have taken a different turn. Devising a use for the land is currently in the hands of Harvard’s two top-ranking officials—Summers and his provost, Steven E. Hyman—as well as a select group of officials on the University-wide Physical Planning Committee.

Recently planners have focused on two more ambitious visions for the property. One would create a high-tech science campus that they say could rival the Silicon Valley in innovation but with a focus on biomedical and biotech research. The other would move as many as several of Harvard’s professional schools across the river in their entirety.

One day, planners say, they hope graduate schools will be competing with each other for the chance to move across the river, rather than holding out to be able to stay in Cambridge.

All this would occur on land that currently looks nothing like the Ivy-clad image of the Cambridge campus.

Allston is a diverse neighborhood of about 70,000 residents with a significant immigrant population.

An Allston business organization welcomes visitors to its website in ten different languages. Some businesses and homes display flags of Mexico, Brazil, Guatemala, Colombia, and El Salvador—often alongside the American flag.

Stickers on the sidewalk and lampposts advertise obscure bands of the Boston music scene—Zippergirl, Soltero, Mori Stylez. Some of these groups play at O’Brien’s, an Allston neighborhood bar on Harvard Ave.

Graffiti adorns cement walls of some industrial buildings and grassy alleys between apartment complexes. Laundry hangs on fire escape balconies overlooking the parking lot of a mom-and-pop grocery store.

Orange and green banners hang from lampposts along Cambridge Street, proclaiming “Allston-Brighton Now.” They are sponsored by the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), which will play a major role in whatever plans Harvard devises for its Allston land.

When the University revealed its secret Allston land purchases in the spring of 1997, the announcement was a public relations disaster. In its wake, Harvard donated a 57,000-square-foot property on North Harvard Street for the building of a new public library.