The Goodspeed Update

The blog I co-founded about urban development issues in and around College Park, Maryland, Rethink College Park, has been named one of the web’s Top 10 Urban Planning, Design, and Development websites by the planning portal Planetizen. The award recognizes the hard work and support of all the site’s contributors and others who have provided […]

Where should a proposed rail link between Metro’s suburban Maryland spokes cross the University of Maryland campus? A debate between top administrators and students is brewing on campus about whether the Purple Line should stop at the student union or a quarter of a mile to the north. At issue: the meaning of the campus master plan, pedestrian safety, and perhaps an antiquated “aggie” mentality that placed the College Park Metro station over a mile from campus.

Today at Rethink College Park we launched an interactive Google Map of all the various development projects we have written about so far on that website. It also serves as a graphical index to the site, since each point is linked to a page containing all our posts on the project.
While it’s not as robust […]

Can a blog help bring new participants to the planning process? We’re not sure, but we’re trying. Two recent articles describe the progress we’ve made since launching Rethink College Park six months ago. The first is from today’s edition of The Diamondback, the campus student newspaper.
When then-graduate student Brian Carroll defended his thesis on redeveloping […]

Things have been kind of quiet around here lately for a couple reasons: I just successfully wrapped up my first semester of graduate school, and because most of my blogging energy has been dedicated to Rethink College Park, a new community website I am involved in.
Readers of this website may be familiar with the general […]

Click here to visit the new blog Rethink College Park.
In May I blogged about an interesting op-ed published in the University of Maryland student newspaper written by Maryland undergraduate David Daddio. Although College Park is the home of the University of Maryland’s flagship campus with almost 35,000 students and has its own Metro station on […]

The city of College Park has given preliminary approval to a $68-million, 17-story residential project planned for a site just north of campus on Route 1. I thought this was interesting:
“The university’s strategic plan calls for a higher quality college town,” said Brian Darmody, the university’s assistant vice president for research and economic development and […]