In general construction news, Guy C. Denechaud writes that “Projects Are Plentiful at Dartmouth College,” Valley Business Journal (April 7, 2008).

The Valley News reports that the fieldhouse at Burnham, called the Sports Pavilion, is open as the clubhouse for the soccer and lacrosse teams. The school will add an athletic trainers’ facility to the north side of the building in the future.

Alpha Theta is also working on repairs to comply with the Fuller Audit.

The Dartmouth reports that Bartlett Hall is being rehabilitated.

New Hampshire Hall’s exterior was photographed prior to the expansions that is under way now.

Yale is preparing to build a new residential college, and the Yale Alumni Magazine has an article called “Your Dream College Here” (March/April 2008). Many students and alumni appear to oppose any new college as a threat to Yale’s sense of community (even though that community, for most, seems to derive from loyalty to one’s own residential college) or on the basis of the particular site chosen for this complex.

The University of Durham, rebranded in 2005 as Durham University, is probably the third-oldest university in England (1832) and has a multi-sport competition with the Oxbridge schools called the Doxbridge Tournament. The university comprises a federation of residential colleges in the center of the city, including one in the ancient castle itself, possibly the most fantastic site for a college anywhere in the world. The nominal head of the university is its Chancellor, Bill Bryson, a former Hanover-area resident.

The College’s real estate arm has posted news of its large New-Urbanist housing redevelopment up by the Rugby Clubhouse and Pat & Tony’s. It will take the name of the prior housing tract of the early 1960s, Rivercrest.

According to a list by City-Data.com, the cities over 5,000 people with the highest percentage of people walking to work are (predictably) small places centered around a military base, a college, or some combination of the two:

1. West Point, N.Y. (pop. 7,138): 57.7%
2. Air Force Academy, Colo. (pop. 7,526): 56.3%
3. Fort Gordon, Ga. (pop. 7,754): 53.0%
4. Twentynine Palms Base, Cal. (housing, pop. 8,413): 48.0%
5. Lackland AFB, Tex. (pop. 7,123): 47.4%
6. Hanover, N.H. (pop. 8,162): 47.2%

The list lends support to the general sense that city planning conducted by a relatively authoritarian central body creates superior places.

In some ways it is surprising to see Hanover on the list, since the story of Dartmouth’s growth over the last 30 years is that of faculty moving out, the “Hanoverizing” of Lyme and Norwich, the creation of school-supported suburbs such as Centerra and Grasse Road, and so on.

(Other tidbits from the website’s lists: The towns in the four zip codes with the lowest crime are named Sleepy Hollow, Pleasantville, Economy, and Prospect. The city over 50,000 with the lowest average temperature is Anchorage, at 34.3 degrees F, which handily beats Duluth and Fargo and a surprising number of cities in Arizona. It is probably a quirk of the zip code divisions in Fairbanks that prevents that city from appearing on the list.)