With growth, hope to drop the ‘Science’ from the Hill
Insistence that new colleges go up on Prospect part of University plan to integrate sciences into student life
From the glassed-in esplanade encircling the fourth floor of Cesar Pelli’s new Malone Engineering Center on Prospect Street, the mid-afternoon bustle below is unmistakable.
Students and faculty rush between labs and lectures. A construction crane stretches skyward in the distance.
But after dusk, when research assistants have put down their pipettes and undergraduates have returned to coffee shops and libraries near their residential colleges, there is little more to see than darkness.
Within a decade, if the University constructs two new residential colleges across...
After reading this article, the argument for putting the colleges there makes a lot of sense. That part of campus is like the unused 'urban sprawl' that could be densified and enlivened by new residential construction. That said, the area needs a lot more than just some new residential colleges to get fixed up. The cemetery being in the way is a HUGE problem. Also, Hillhouse Ave aside, there are really no nice spaces (like Cross Campus, Old Campus, etc) in which to walk and hang out. The traffic on Prospect is terrible and unpleasant, as is crossing Grove St. So there are lots of urban design issues here that need to get worked out. Maybe Pelli can help.
Add an auditorium and rehearsal space for student productions. Add in a central transit waiting area. A state of the art student union. A few student only basketball courts. And last but not least a security station for the Prospect Hill area. Interesting, safe and a reason to go there.
This sounds like a joke, but Yale really needs some bars/lounges up there. Simply put, students will go where there's alcohol. If Yale could do something like the new pub in the student center at Harvard, which I've heard has been a big hit, that would provide an anchor around which to base student life. Also, you don't want drunk students wandering all the way from Crown St. to Prospect in the middle of the night.
Bicycles would solve everything. But you would need to convert Prospect Street, from Sachem to the Medical Campus, to a bus-walk-bike-only street. It would serve as the "spine" for the campus and unite everything, once and for all. You would also need to make New Haven more bicycle and pedestrian friendly in general, not just the Farmington Canal trail. This would greatly reduce the perceived distances on the campus.