Disruption and Detours: Conceptualizing the Future of an Ever-Changing Campus, Delaney McCarty, UG '26 (9BA40435)

My research for WRI 220 aims to relate Princeton’s construction to existing scholarship on campus planning. I use a framework suggested by Hajrasouliha, a scholar in the field of urban planning. In his paper Master-planning the American campus: goals, actions, and design strategies, Hajrasouliha proposes a set of campus form dimensions. I consider the impact of Princeton’s construction in terms of Hajrasouliha’s framework and determine if Princeton’s construction enhances or detracts from its stated goals (particularly aspects of land use and movement). My data collection process consists of a site survey and an analysis of on-campus detours. For the site survey, I looked at timeline, area, and development goal data for 14 past and present Princeton construction sites. Generally, accessibility focused sites took the least amount of time and space, while academic sites took up the most space and student body expansion sites took up the most time. For my detour analysis, I focused on the detour zone around the Princeton Art Museum. To determine if the detours made walking through campus take longer, I compared travel times/distances estimates for Google Maps suggested routes between all buildings surrounding the detour to calculated travel times/distances which consider the suggested detour routes. I discovered that there was a high level of variability as to whether the Google estimates or calculated values were longer. My research concludes that by Hajrasouliha’s framework, Princeton excels as a livable campus but falls short in terms of connectivity.