A day in the life of a Senior Planner

Meet Maile.

When Maile Takahashi graduated from the University of California at Davis in 1990, she had big dreams of using her environmental planning degree to make positive changes in the way people experience their urban environments. Instead, she found herself in a consulting firm that sent her from city to city to do studies, suggest changes and then, well, leave.

“I started to be really dissatisfied with that,” says Takahashi, “I couldn’t see anything get implemented. So I decided to get a city planning degree because a planner gets to stay in a city and really do something.”

Now, six years after earning her master’s degree from Cornell, Takahashi is getting to do something pretty significant. As the senior planner for regulatory approvals with Harvard’s Allston Development Group, she’s part of the team that is bringing to life the University’s vision of a new 340-acre campus in Allston.

“As Harvard is developing its master plan for Allston, there are a number of approvals we need from various agencies in Boston and at the state level,” says Takahashi, who joined Harvard Planning and Real Estate in 2001 and joined the Allston project in 2004. “My job is to assist Harvard in getting those approvals, which address the way the area is zoned. We develop the plans for each phase of the project based on the city’s requirements and then show [them to] the city and neighborhood to get feedback. We’re constantly learning what the city requires and what the neighborhood desires.”

After four years of intensive study, planning and meeting with officials and residents, Takahashi says Harvard is hoping to break ground on the first phase of the project – a science building – by the summer of 2007.

When a project of this magnitude is underway – the entire campus will take an estimated 50 years to complete – Takahashi says concerns among neighbors and officials run the gamut from traffic and parking to the size of buildings. And, since the first phase of the master plan could take anywhere from 10 to 15 years to complete, worries about how the area will be used in the short term has led Takahashi to another role.

“I work on interim land-use activities. The neighborhood pressed us to come up with a plan, so the buildings we’ve acquired don’t sit empty while we develop the area,” she says.

While decades is a long time to see the fruits of one’s efforts, Takahashi says having the luxury of a long-term vision is what attracted her to Harvard in the first place.

“It’s nice to be working for an organization that has a higher mission – education. Harvard’s vision is the long term. That’s a really unique perspective to have. For planning, it’s unheard of. Planners dream about a project like this.”

That fact energizes Takahashi, whose passion for the project allows her to strike a balance between work and the challenges of caring for year-old twins. A four-day workweek has helped. “It’s nice I was given that flexibility,” she says. “I feel very supported. Harvard is amazing that way. I can do it because I love what I do.”