Rethink College Park will be officially presented with the 2011 Florence Beck Kurdle Award for Community Activism and Achievement by Maryland Secretary of Planning Richard E. Hall this morning. The honor, part of Maryland’s Smart, Green, and Growing Awards Program, is presented annually to a group who demonstrates professional commitment to making Smart Growth a reality in the state. Secretary Hall will make the presentation before a regular meeting of the Region Forward Coalition at College Park City Hall at 10:30 a.m. Clay Gump, a longtime member of the Rethink College Park, will be on hand to receive the award on behalf of the group’s contributors and founders.

What is Rethink College Park?

Rethink College Park (RTCP) was launched in July 2006 as a user-friendly website dedicated to creating a focused and sustained conversation about the future of College Park. Its mission is to “help transform College Park into a great college town…. [through] full access to information, public dialogue, and the power of creative ideas.” Thousands now visit the site each week: reviewing maps, renderings and site plans; posting comments and contributing stories and tips.

RTCP’s simple structure, straightforward style and engaging content have garnered the project nearly universal praise in the community. Part journalism and part smart growth advocacy community group, the project’s impact spans far beyond the Internet. The group is the preeminent area advocate for redevelopment of the Route 1 Corridor in College Park; helping local citizens, politicians and university officials understand current events that affect their mutual interests. Its reporting helps further the goal of a pedestrian-friendly, transit-ready, mixed-use district for the state’s flagship university. The website has dramatically changed the way local citizens and the region view College Park’s smart growth potential.

Rethink College Park sets the debate in local traditional news outlets: helping initiate countless stories in the Washington Post, The Gazette, and the Diamondback (UMD student newspaper). It educates journalists and “breaks” dozens of smart growth-related stories each year. More importantly, the project has succeeded in instigating substantive policy change. The group’s members use the site as a sounding board to communicate smart growth concepts to the public and shape specific projects such as the University of Maryland’s East Campus Redevelopment Initiative (a major mixed-use redevelopment) and the routing of the Purple Line through College Park.

Perhaps best known for its advocacy of student housing construction for University of Maryland students, Rethink College Park has played a significant role in alerting local elected officials to the desperate need for student housing and bringing student leaders to the table to push projects to completion. The group also helped preserve and expand an important impact fee waiver incentive that encourages private student housing projects near the University of Maryland campus. Almost 4,000 beds of student housing, mostly in private, mixed-use projects have been completed since the group’s founding in 2006.

In 2008, the urban planning portal Planetizen named Rethink College Park one of the web’s top 10 planning websites.

Learn more HERE.

The following is a presentation I gave to my colleagues at UNC’s Department of City and Regional Planning last month. Included is some background on the beginnings of the RTCP as well as an honest assessment of the project’s impacts and takeaways. While the audience was composed of aspiring planners and academics, the presentation is accessible to a general audience.
Rethink College Park – DCRP Speaks Presentation

*Please comment within this post if you plan to attend.

To Rethink College Park readers and contributors,

As you’ve likely noticed, there have been some changes around RTCP. As our leaders have moved in new directions, so too has this blog.

In order to keep RTCP as a valuable community resource, we’ll need your help. If you’re interested in getting involved in any capacity, please join us in a meeting to discuss how we can maintain RTCP and move it forward. This is an excellent way to get involved in the community and learn more about the unique challenges and opportunities that face it. RTCP is a nationally recognized smart growth project that has become extremely influential in agitating for smart growth in College Park. More than 1,000 unique visitors read our content each week.

We’ll meet this Wednesday, October 6 in the lower-level conference room of College Park City Hall. The meeting will run from 7:30 to 8:30PM.

Bring your questions, criticisms, and ideas for Rethink College Park. We’ll see you then!

It’s official.  The University of Maryland, College Park, has chosen a replacement for retiring President, CD Mote.  According to a University System of Maryland press release, the Board of Regents reported today the appointment of Wallace D. Loh as President, effective November 1, 2010.

Mr. Loh, who has over 30 years of experience in higher education, is currently the Executive Vice President and Provost at the University of Iowa.  He has held this position since 2008.

Although Mr. Loh was born in Shanghai, China, he grew up in Lima, Peru.   After graduating from high school in Peru, he immigrated to the U.S., where he attended Grinnell College in Iowa.  In addition to holding a PhD in psychology from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Mr. Loh holds a JD from Yale Law School.

More information can be found at the following link, http://www.usmd.edu/newsroom/news/877.

Some of our longtime readers may be wondering what has become of RTCP’s former editors and co-founders. Both of them have moved on to top planning programs and are cheering on College Park’s renaissance from afar.

Rob Goodspeed is entering his second year as a PhD student at the M.I.T. Department of Urban Studies and Planning and has a three-year fellowship appointment in the Urban Information Systems program group. In keeping with his work here at RTCP, Rob’s research in Cambridge focuses on how technology can improve cities by making urban planning decisions more democratic and informed. In his current research, Rob is exploring the social, political, and practical dimensions of the use of Internet tools for participation in urban planning. You can keep up with Rob on his personal blog: GoodspeedUpdate.com.

David Daddio is about to enter the Master’s program at the Department of City and Regional Planning at UNC-Chapel Hill where he will focus on Land Use, Environmental Planning, and Transportation. In large part because of his work here at RTCP, David was offered a two-year fellowship appointment by the Department and will serve as a Co-Editor of the Carolina Planning Journal – the oldest student-run planning publication in the country. David looks forward to studying market-oriented approaches to growth management and land conservation that facilitate investment in existing communities and advance rational, environmentally-conscious communities.