Harvard University unveiled plans on Thursday for a multibillion-dollar campus expansion that aims to turn America's oldest university into one of the world's top hubs for stem-cell research and other life sciences.

The plan, years in the making, will give a radical new look to Harvard's campus over the next 50 years in the most ambitious expansion in the school's 371-year history.

It calls for a science complex, museum space, new student housing, parks and a public square on more than 100 hectares of land, adding a campus in Boston's Allston district across the Charles River from its main Cambridge campus.

Harvard, the world's richest university with an endowment of nearly $30 billion, submitted the "Institutional Master Plan" to Boston officials on Thursday. It stopped short of saying how much it would cost or who would pay for it.

"This is a framework for a 50-year process that we hope will lead to new interdisciplinary study," Harvard Provost Steven Hyman told reporters by telephone, adding, "We hope it will strengthen Boston's prominence in life sciences." Life sciences involve the study of living organisms.

Dubbed the Allston Initiative, the plan would turn industrial land now used as parking lots and truck and rail yards into an urban center with stores, tree-lined streets, bike paths and access to the Charles River, a popular destination for students and tourists.

During the first 20 years of the expansion, Harvard would build 371,600 to 464,500 square meters of buildings and create at least 5,000 jobs, university officials said.

Construction in Allston could begin this summer when Harvard hopes to break ground on a 46,450-square-meter science complex that will house the school's stem-cell researchers and other institutes.

Hyman said Harvard did not plan to admit significantly more students whose tuition might help pay for the project.

Harvard has roughly 19,500 students, of whom about 7,000 are undergraduates.

Source: Chiina Daily/agencies