Illustration by Cody Angell

If nothing else, there's no question that La Aldea, the apartment complex now nearing completion on North Euclid Avenue between East University Boulevard and East Sixth Street, is an impressive construction. Between two and four stories tall, it will house as many as 300 graduate students, beginning this summer. But La Aldea is not impressive only for its size or proximity to campus. It also represents the rapid fulfillment of a promise the administration made to graduate students three years ago.

In the wake of the demolition of Christopher City, the university's previous graduate and family housing complex at East Fort Lowell Road and North Columbus Avenue, President Likins and other campus administrators promised that a modern, convenient replacement would be built soon.

La Aldea is that complex, and UA should be applauded for keeping its word.

But if La Aldea means that some graduate students will once again have a UA-subsidized home, it also displays a profound lack of planning. While proximity to campus is appealing to many, undergraduates and graduate students ÷ especially those with families ÷ have other priorities to consider. For these students, safety, peace and quiet are likely to be as or more important than being close to campus activities and services.

La Aldea serves up proximity, but lies sandwiched between two large freshman dormitories, four lanes of fast-moving traffic on North Euclid Avenue, the Park Student Union, and the floodlit, multi-story Tyndall Garage. Sure, La Aldea is new, up-to-date and a terrific improvement over its predecessor. But its potential as a tranquil refuge for harried graduate students and their families seems somewhat limited, to say the least. Mixing family housing and one of the campus' busiest parking areas, in particular, seems like a sure-fire recipe for trouble.

And there are other problems: Like the nearby Park Student Union addition, La Aldea removes public parking spaces at exactly the moment when the demand for parking in that part of campus seems likely to skyrocket. This seems a little shortsighted, even if long-term campus plans promise that some lost spaces will eventually be restored. But La Aldea is scarcely the only place on campus where this paradoxical policy is being implemented.

A few weeks ago, an acquaintance of mine, anthropology graduate student Alison Davis, made a late-night

journey to the Main Library. Davis planned to briefly use the small visitors' parking lot located just east of the library while she dropped off dozens of books checked out for her comprehensive exams. Instead, she ended up circling the parking lot for 20 minutes.

Like many others, Davis had come to rely on the visitors' lot as a close, convenient place to park for evening library trips. But the opening of the Integrated Learning Center's Information Commons changed all that. Lured by dozens of state-of-the-art computers, hordes of students now crowd library parking at all hours, leaving patrons fighting for choice spots.

And the situation is getting worse, not better. On April 14, the university permanently closed the visitors' lot to allow the construction of an addition to the Optical Sciences Center. As a result, there is now no public parking in close proximity to the library, except for a few hotly contested street spaces. On a recent early-evening library visit, the only parking available was on the fourth floor of the Cherry Avenue Garage. With demand for parking expected, finding a library parking space at all ÷ let alone one close enough to carry in loads of books ÷ is starting to look doubtful.

UA will never fully resolve its parking and space problems ÷ our constricted campus ensures that. But the rising demand for space requires creative thinking and innovative solutions, not just more construction.

In the case of La Aldea, for instance, one need only look at the numerous student apartment complexes currently operating or being built in the neighborhoods surrounding campus. While neighborhoods generally oppose the introduction of dozens of rowdy undergraduates into their communities, at least one neighborhood association leader I spoke with said he would welcome graduate student or family housing. La Aldea is administered by a privately run property management company. Would it have been impossible for a similar public/private partnership to have taken shape in a more secluded location?

The answer to UA's parking woes would also appear to lie with more creative options. Some on these opinions pages have argued for a incremental parking permit scheme, charging students who live close to campus more money in order to encourage them to leave their vehicles at home. Similarly, Davis is now soliciting support to campaign for a drive-through book drop somewhere on campus, allowing students to return library materials without having to park.

Space is a real problem at UA, and there's no need to demonize the administration over it ÷ projects like La Aldea demonstrate that planners' hearts are often in the right place. In order to resolve the UA's space crunch, however, campus planners will have to learn to think outside the box.