City officials, students take talks to the Web
Mike Silvestri
Issue date: 1/31/07 Section: News
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.
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.
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