NSF Renewal Grant to GSD Continues Urban Study Project

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has given a ten-member team of Graduate School of Design faculty a $350,000 renewal grant to continue its research on the urbanization of the Massachusetts Bay South Shore.

The project, entitled, "The Interaction between Urbanization and Land: Quality and Quantity in Environmental Planning and Design," is now in its third year of operation.

The grant, given by the Research Applied to National Needs program (RANN) of the NSF, became effective February 1 and will continue through Feb. 1, 1975. This brigs the foundation's total funding for the project to over $890,000.

Co-principal investigators for the project are Carl F. Steinitz, professor of Landscape Architecture and Urban Design, and Peter P. Rogers, associate professor of City and Regional Planning.

The study is looking into such questions as conservation versus urban growth, and the unplanned spreading of suburbs versus optimal patterns for urban expansions, in eight principal towns along Boston's southeast sector.

The project will make answers and information on these and other questions available to all the towns studied in the project. Peter C. Goodale, a technical associate at the design school, who is involved in the project, said yesterday that all the information gathered is given to the towns in report form as well as being stored in a computer bank.

The project area is divided into 2 1/2 acre grids for study purposes. A wide range of information is then gathered on each grid and entered into the computer. The computer is used to predict various trends under given conditions.