Rethinking College Park

The city of College Park presents an interesting dichotomy. On the one hand, we have a highly touted top-20 university with finely manicured lawns, top-notch research and an energetic student population. On the other, we have a city in shambles with broken storefronts, dilapidated housing and all the other problems typical of an inner-ring suburb.

In recent years, there has been some glimmer of hope. Because of the ongoing regional real estate boom and emergence of this university, the city stands on the brink of a massive redevelopment campaign. Andrew Rose and his College Town Committee recognized this, and I believe they deserve to be commended for pulling off the April 15 charrette.

I had a chance to work with other students, alumni, architecture faculty and city officials to examine the redevelopment of the Knox Boxes, the future of the university's landholdings east of Fraternity Row along Paint Branch Parkway, the placement of the Metro's purple line slated to eventually come through the campus and the fate of the city at large.

Although the charrette was idealistic in that we ignored financial considerations, we proved that discussion and debate about these issues are needed - things that were formerly non-existent within the university community.

There was no shortage of enthusiasm among people who clearly had bottled-up opinions. Everyone wanted the city to consider walkability, open space, mixed-use developments, downtown vibrancy and that elusive "college-town feel" in future planning.

The university's relationship with the city seems to be warming. Recent student-friendly city appropriations and the proposal to allow local residents to use Shuttle-UM are a step in the right direction. City planners have responded to public interest in the Knox Box area with their own upcoming charrette. They are adopting innovative planning tools such as form-based codes that signal expectations to developers and speed up the permitting process.

Although controversial, when the University View complex is complete, it will be the first truly mixed-use property in the area. The future seems bright, but the current Shuttle-UM controversy reminds us of the ever-present temptation to cordon ourselves off from the surrounding community. These temptations must be avoided at all costs or we risk the viability of our long-term goal - a College Park on the level of Arizona State University-Tempe, University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign or University of California-Berkeley.

Other significant decisions with long-term implications lurk on the horizon. The university is backing a $100 million Interstate 95 connector road that would bypass Route 1 and enter the campus near the Comcast Center. This project poses the very real potential of exacerbating on-campus traffic, creating the need for more parking lots and ultimately encouraging the current haphazard pattern of land use.

Developers are quickly moving forward with plans to build University View-like student housing all along Route 1. What steps are being taken to strengthen pedestrian and transit links to the campus? How can we keep an efficient flow of traffic on Route 1 while making College Park a better and more livable place?

The time is now for the university to share resources with the city and strengthen communications with the county, which wields zoning authority. The student population living in College Park rivals the city's resident population yet, as of now, we are only passive observers in these issues. We receive information piecemeal from the occasional newspaper article and there is little opportunity for public input.

This is why I propose the city and the university combine resources and form a user-friendly website - an ongoing public participation venue where students and city residents can be educated, debate the merits of projects and voice opinions. I can only hope the incoming Student Government Association takes these issues seriously, abandons previous notions that student participation in city issues is futile and fosters a commitment to creating a vision of a better College Park.

David Daddio is a junior environmental economics major. He can be reached at ddaddio@umd.edu.