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College town
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A college town or university town is a community (often literally a town, but possibly a small or medium sized city, or in some cases a neighborhood or a district of a city) which is dominated by its university population. The university may be large, or there may be several smaller institutions such as liberal arts colleges clustered, or the residential population may be small, but college towns in all cases are so dubbed because the presence of the educational institution(s) pervades economic and social life.
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A college town or university town is a community (often literally a town, but possibly a small or medium sized city, or in some cases a neighborhood or a district of a city) which is dominated by its university population. The university may be large, or there may be several smaller institutions such as liberal arts colleges clustered, or the residential population may be small, but college towns in all cases are so dubbed because the presence of the educational institution(s) pervades economic and social life. Many local residents may be employed by the university - which may be the largest employer in the community, many businesses cater primarily to the university, and indeed the students population may outnumber the local population outright.
In Europe, a university town is generally characterized by having an old university often founded before, or in some cases shortly after, the industrial revolution. The economy of the city is closely related with the university activity and highly supported by the entire university structure which may include university hospitals and clinics, university printing houses, libraries, laboratories, business incubators, student rooms, dining halls, students' unions, student societies, and academic festivities. Moreover, the history of the city is often indissociable from the history of the university itself. Many European university towns have not been merely important places of scientific and educational endeavor, but also centers of political, cultural and social influence to its respective society throughout the centuries. Examples of these cities include Durham, St Andrews, Krakow, Leiden, Bologna, Salamanca, Coimbra, Leuven, Heidelberg, Göttingen, Pisa, Marburg, Ferrara, Uppsala, Siena, Pavia, Delft, Tübingen, or Poitiers. Potchefstroom and Stellenbosch are South African examples of university towns in the European tradition.
Besides a highly educated and largely transient population, a stereotypical college town often features a high number of people living non-traditional lifestyles and subcultures ("college town hippies") and high tolerance for unconventionality in general, an unusually active musical or cultural scene, and unusually left-wing politics. While relatively lacking heavy industry, many have become centers of technological research and innovative startups.
Town-Gown relations
As in the case of a company town, the large and transient population attracted to the university may come into conflict with longstanding natives. Students may come from outside the area, and thus represent a different—sometimes radically different—culture. Furthermore, students are concentrated in a small, young (but still adult) age demographic, whose living habits may not be perfectly compatible with older members of society.
Economically, the high spending power of the university and of its students in aggregate may inflate the cost of living above that of the region. Indeed, it is not uncommon to find that many university employees commute in from surrounding areas, finding the cost of living in town too expensive.
Studentification, in which a growing student population move in large numbers to traditionally non-student neighborhoods, may be perceived as a form of invasion or gentrification. The phenomenon has several causes, including university enrollment expanding far beyond the capacity of on-campus housing, inadequate zoning enforcement, and student culture. At the same time as neighborhood associations work to limit conversion of family homes to student rentals, some local residents may oppose the construction of large on-campus dormitories or expansion of fraternity and sorority houses, forcing a growing enrollment to seek housing in town. Moreover, a single-family home can be converted into several smaller rental units, or shared by a number of students whose combined resources exceed those of a typical single-family rentala strong incentive for absentee landlords to cater to students.
In the US, educational institutions are often exempted from paying local taxes, so in the absence of a system for Payments In Lieu Of Taxes (PILOT), the university population will disproportionately burden parts of the local public infrastructure, such as roads or law enforcement; however, others argue that students disproportionately underburden other parts of the local public infrastructure, such as local primary and secondary schools, by far the most costly line item in most North American city and town budgets, and provide tax revenues, through local sales tax and property tax paid by landlords. When a university expands its facilities, the potential loss of property tax revenue is thus a concern, in addition to local desire to preserve open space or historic neighborhoods.
As a result, members of the local population may resent the university, and especially its students. The students, in turn, may view the local residents as hypocrites who willingly take the jobs at the university provided by student tuition and fees, and who willingly accept the tax revenues (e.g., local sales tax, property tax on rented properties) that students generate, but take great issue with students' lifestyles. Some students refer to regular inhabitants as townies, a term with somewhat derogatory connotations.
This "town and gown" dichotomy notwithstanding, students and the outside community typically find a peaceful (even friendly) coexistence, with the town receiving significant economic and cultural benefits from the university, and the students often adapting themselves to the culture of the town.
Settlement in college towns
While noise, traffic, and other quality of life issues have not been resolved, some advocates of New Urbanism have led the development of neighborhoods in college towns by specifically capitalizing on their proximity to university life. For instance, some universities have developed properties to allow faculty and staff members to walk to work, reducing demand for limited on-campus parking; Duke University's Trinity Heights development is a key example. In many cases, developers have built communities where access to the university (even if not directly adjacent) is promoted as an advantage.
Student housing is also an important component of college towns. In the United States most state universities have 50 percent or more of their enrolled students living off-campus. This trend, which began in the 1960s, originally meant the conversion of near campus single-family homes to student housing, creating "student ghettos."
Purpose-built off-campus student housing areas began being created in the 1970s in more college towns. The Cotton District in Starkville, Mississippi is an especially well-designed example of such a development. Beginning around 2000 in the United States, nationwide real estate investment trusts and publicly traded corporations began developing student housing complexes.
Another notable development is the surge in popularity of retiring to college towns, since the 1990s. Reasons for retirees moving to college towns include presence of cultural and educational opportunities, college athletic events, good medical facilities (often at teaching hospitals affiliated with medical schools), a low cost of living, nostalgia, and often pedestrian- or public transit-friendly development pattern. Several development companies now specialize in constructing retirement communities in college towns, and in some cases the communities have developed formal relationships with the local institution.
The demand for housing from students, faculty, staff, and retirees have kept college town home prices stable during the housing market downturn that began in 2005.
College towns worldwide
The college town is largely an American phenomenon, according to Blake Gumprecht, an assistant professor of geography at the University of New Hampshire who has researched the subject considerably; in Europe and Asia, most institutions of higher education are found in major cities -- with considerable exceptions such as Cambridge, Oxford, Lund or Heidelberg. As new institutions are founded to serve growing student populations, however, the phenomenon of the college town is recognizable worldwide.
College towns in the United States
Towns in the United States which have been called college towns include:
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
- Angwin (Pacific Union College)
- Arcata (Humboldt State University)
- Berkeley (University of California, Berkeley)
- Chico (California State University, Chico)
- Claremont (Claremont McKenna College, Pomona College, Harvey Mudd College, Scripps College, Pitzer College)
- Davis (University of California, Davis)
- Isla Vista (University of California, Santa Barbara)
- Palo Alto (Stanford University)
- San Luis Obispo (California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo)
- Santa Cruz (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming
See also
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