You gotta love artist’s renditions. They can make any place, even Boston, look like paradise.

Harvard revealed its 50-year plan for how it wants to expand its campus across the Charles into Allston, giving it a major makeover along the way (see this Globe article).

The 69-page report – PDF, submitted yesterday to the Boston Redevelopment Authority for review, proposes some pretty big changes to the Allston landscape. Here are the highlights:

• putting part of Soldier’s Field Road, the road that snakes alongside the river on the Boston side, underground
• building a new footbridge
• rebuilding and widening the existing Weeks pedestrian bridge to make room for bicycles and shuttles between the campuses
• creating a new Harvard Square-like Barry’s Corner at the corner of North Harvard Street and Western Ave.
• new streets, plazas and park space in Allston
• new shuttle bus services

Interdisciplinary science is central to this plan: 1.5 million square feet of new space for science in the next 20 years and a potential 2 million more beyond that. There are even plans for a 100-foot wide pathway called Academic Way, “…useful for interdisciplinary meetings, conversation, and sitting,” according to the report. One of the first new buildings to be built will be one for the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and construction could start as early as this year.

Allston residents apparently aren’t thrilled about all these plans (see the telling quotes in the Globe piece and this article from the Harvard Crimson from earlier this week). They have been meeting regularly with Harvard planners, and no doubt will be at the upcoming public meetings that will be part of the review process.