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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 educational institution(s) presence pervades economic and social life. Many local residents may be employed by the university, 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, dinning 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 Oxford, Cambridge, Leiden, Salamanca, Coimbra, Leuven, Heidelberg, Göttingen, Pisa, Marburg, Ferrara, Uppsala, Aberdeen, Pécs, Siena, Pavia, Delft, Tübingen, or Poitiers.

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 absent of heavy industry, many have become centers of technological research and innovative startups.

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[edit] Town-Gown relations

Main article: Town and gown

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 age group, whose living habits may not be agreeable in general to 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 rental—a 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 the local public infrastructure such as roads or law enforcement. When a university expands its facilities, the potential loss of 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, especially its students. The students, in turn, may 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 a significant economic and cultural benefits from the university, and the students often adapting themselves to the culture of the town.

[edit] 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 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, obviously, also is 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 1960's, originally meant the conversion of near campus single-family homes to student housing, creating the ubiquitous Student Ghetto.

Purpose-built, off campus student housing areas began being created in the 1970's in more university 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. Besides nostalgia for one's younger days, retirees are attracted by presence of cultural and educational opportunities, athletic events, good medical facilities, and often pedestrian- or 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.

[edit] List of college towns

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[1]; in continental Europe and Asia, most institutions of higher education are found in major cities. As new institutions are founded to serve growing student populations, however, the phenomenon of the college town is recognizable worldwide.

By reputation, university founders sought to avoid the noise—and sin—of major cities, but the history is more complex. Civic leaders in new settlements or small towns often lobbied heavily for them, to secure the population base as well as for the economic investment.

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[edit] United States

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