Brighton Road and Herron Avenue got bright outlooks yesterday when Carnegie Mellon University architecture students unveiled dream schemes for enlivening the corridors to public officials and neighborhood advocates Downtown.

The designs -- which double as class work under the school's "urban lab" program -- resulted from months of brainstorming meetings with residents in both neighborhoods. To find solutions for a plague of vacant land, the Urban Redevelopment Authority initiated the project, with support from the Urban Land Institute.

The plans include an indoor bazaar off Brighton that would draw regional visitors to the North Side, a cultural center blending Hill history and jazz across from the Martin Luther King Reading Room on Herron and stores, restaurants, houses, urban farms and other green community spaces along both corridors.

Mayor Luke Ravenstahl pledged "to help make these drawings come to fruition," and although full fruition would be many years away, some ideas can be implemented as quickly as "within maybe six months," said city Planning Director Patrick Ford.

Mr. Ford seized on public art as most immediately possible. "We're beginning a public-art agenda" in 2007 "and I have funding for a public art manager," he said. "We have the opportunity now to look at some of these critical areas" -- places where public art could help spur development.

The Public Art Office is a new piece of the planning department, with $132,000 in funding over three years from the Heinz Endowments. The contribution was born of "the idea that public art will translate so clearly into public amenity improvements and economic development that the city will see a value in continuing the position itself" after three years, said Doug Root, spokesman for the Heinz Endowments.

One thing the city is not hurting for is public art. "We have it stockpiled in garages and public works warehouses," said Mr. Ford. He vowed, to an audience of community advocates earlier in the day, "to work with every one of you to establish a public art plan."

After public art, urban farms and other green spaces are likely the next least complicated endeavors.

One heavily vacant swath off Brighton Road in California-Kirkbride could become an urban farm with greenhouses and housing for farmers who could sell produce to the grocery the students invented.

Rebecca Davidson-Wagner, executive director of the Central Northside Neighborhood Council, said she could see such a symbiotic and sustainable plan working in the neighborhood. "But it will take a strong push" by an entity capable of making that happen, she said.

The city's recent decision to buy back the liens it sold to the debt recovery firm Capital Assets will make some privately held properties easier to get, said Ms. Davidson-Wagner.

The URA owns large tracts of land along Herron, but most of the land on Brighton is privately held.

The Hill scenario included designs for signage at Herron and Bigelow, advertising in vertical artsy letters a neighborhood that is not announced now, with a driving range and batting cage area nearby.

"Boundaries are very undefined now," said Luis Rico, associate dean of the College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon. "We heard residents say that their neighborhood is not called the Hill anymore," but designations such as Crawford-Roberts and Terrace Village. "So maybe we can tell people, 'here it is, a place full of history.' "