College Park has been on a building spree over the last decade so intense that it made a list of the top 10 most-changed cities in the country.
As part of a long-term plan to build more student housing, the city has approved a number of large apartment buildings along Route 1 such as The Varsity and University View and even projects aimed at graduate students.
One statistic tells the story. In 2013, the median year that a home was built in College Park was 1979. Ten years later, it’s 17 years younger.
That made College Park the ninth most-changed city over that time period, according to data from PropertyShark cited in the New York Times.
Other cities on the list include Hoboken, N.J.; Atlanta and Seattle. Notably, the cities that changed even more include Williston, N.D., where the discovery of oil has transformed the local economy, and Farmers Branch, Texas, a fast-growing suburb of Dallas.
Urban planner Dan Reed noted that a lack of a lack of student housing led to a “tent city” protest in 2007, riting on social media that the growth in housing has made Route 1 “unrecognizable” compared to then.
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