When then-graduate student Brian Carroll defended his thesis on redeveloping the Knox Box area last month, he never expected the debate to travel beyond a committee of professors.
But once the local development blog Rethink College Park got wind of his work, posting Carroll’s drawings and ideas to revamp the aging neighborhood populated with students, the comment section came alive with interest. The attention highlighted the push for student housing development downtown and the propensity online forums have for facilitating discussion, but Carroll expressed surprise at the reaction.
“I think the thing that they did was pull it all together,” Carroll said of the Rethink College Park editors. “I could’ve completed my thesis and put it on the shelf in the library, but that got it some publicity.”
Carroll’s project assumes a scenario of complete removal of what many call inefficient box-like housing now standing between Knox Road and Guilford Drive, proposing a complete redesign of the neighborhood. An underground parking garage, a combination of retail and more than 900 housing units, all surrounding a wide public square are among the elements of Carroll’s project.
But if the interest in Carroll’s work once posted on the Internet and the exchange of ideas since the blog’s launch are any indication, Internet discussions could be the future of public discourse here. That doesn’t mean city council meetings will ever cease, but council member Bob Catlin said with his constituents becoming increasingly busy, communicating with them electronically has become a major convenience.
“In the old days, we had a lot of planning sessions going on with the public,” said Catlin, who said he visits the blog 10 to 15 times a week and has even posted guest columns. “And now there’s a lot of concern, but it’s really hard to get involved with discussion.”
The blog, launched six months ago by David Daddio, an environmental science and policy major and former Diamondback columnist, and Rob Goodspeed, an architecture and planning major, pulls in mostly undergraduate students and residents, but also development companies, graduate students and city officials who discuss the 32 planned city projects and a number of other issues.
Carroll said he never used to be much of a blogger until he started using this site, which Goodspeed said began as the an idea to address College Park issues exclusively.
“I’m not a typical student. I’m a little older, so I don’t blog a lot,” said Carroll, who heard architecture calling after working years in other areas. “But this site has really opened my eyes.”
Goodspeed said the site gets about 150 to 200 hits each day. The blog is joined by TheCollegeParkSite.com, which focuses mostly on student issues.
“In order for the city to move in the right direction, the divide between the city and university is going to have to be closed,” Goodspeed said. “Unequivocally, we think we’ve been very successful with that.”
The blog’s reach amazed Carroll, who said he read about construction near a stream behind Hillel on the campus on the Rethink College Park blog and decided to talk about it with a university environmental official. To Carroll’s surprise, however, the official didn’t know anything about it.
“It was amazing to me,” Carroll said, “for someone – in theory – in power at the university to find out in such a roundabout way.”
Daniel Reed, a sophomore architecture and English student who runs a blog about Montgomery County, said the Rethink College Park website is not used enough by apathetic students, however. To gain a following at the level of another blog Goodspeed co-created, the Washington-based DCist.com, Reed said apathetic students need to start following a little more closely.
“These are very intensely local things,” Reed said of the issues about which Rethink College Park writes. “[Students] interested in politics are thinking about Iraq, or they’re thinking about President Bush. They’re not thinking about the Taco Bell down the street.”
District 3 Councilwoman-elect Stephanie Stullich, who will represent downtown, said the Internet is a unique, up-and-coming medium because of the role graphics can play as much as anything else. Rethink College Park, as an example, provides a number of blueprints and artists’ renderings of proposed developments around the city.
“I think it’s really important for people of all ages to get involved with the city government, and if this is a way that gets younger people – or older people – involved, I think that’s a great thing,” Stullich said.
The site began with a goal of 500 visitors per day, after Goodspeed, a graduate student, graduated from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, which is abundant with blogs, Daddio said.
“I think [they] just came around at the right time,” Carroll said.
Contact reporter Mike Silvestri at silvestridbk@gmail.com.
