My friend Dale has just posted a rough introduction to his urban planning thesis to his blog. He is making an ambitious argument — perhaps too ambitious — but I’m interested to see what he uncovers in the process of investigating it.

In this thesis, I argue that students individually and collectively were agents of change in this period of major alterations in the educational project of the university, in local and university housing policy, and in federal housing policy, making significant contributions to urban development even while they worked within a structural framework of national economic depression and world war, changing federal housing policy, suburbanization, the emergence of the research university, and urban crisis and revitalization. This consideration of student housing, then, is an effective means of examining the changing relationship between the city and the university in twentieth century American urban history.

I’ll also be interested to see what comparisons could be made with College Park from his finished work, and what insights he uncovers on the topic of student voting rights. A year ago I blogged about an interesting group, the Student Voting Rights Campaign, but sadly just noticed their rich trove of articles collected in 2004 was lost to a server crash. Here’s to hoping it’s backed up somewhere.

> Urban Oasis: “Allow Me to Introduce Myself“