College Towns

The communities that are home to America's institutions of higher education have long been complicated places of cultured tradition, social and intellectual vitality, fiercely territorial local politics, and actors alternately partnering and at odds with their colleges. Their importance in urban history became particularly notable in the period after World War II but goes back to the colonial era. College towns are best identified not by their size, but by whether the local college or university is prominent or even dominant in the city's culture, economy, and politics. Thus, cities such as Boston and Chicago, although home to many colleges and universities, are not generally considered college towns. However, many relatively small towns such as Brockport, New York and Arcata, California—homes to the State University of New York–Brockport and Humboldt State University, respectively—are thought of as college towns. More typical examples include Ann Arbor, Michigan, home to the University of Michigan, and Norman, Oklahoma, home to the University of Oklahoma.

The nation's first college, Harvard, was a seminary situated in Cambridge, Massachusetts, geographically removed from the influences of Boston in a tightly knit community. While the college was located at the edge of the New England town, the college fathers played a role in Cambridge religious life. Harvard's colonial contemporary, the College of William and Mary, was founded in Williamsburg, Virginia just before it became the capital of the Commonwealth. That college's founders and campus architect initially emulated the quadrangles of Oxford and Cambridge in order to keep students separated from the rest of the community. Such strategies are indicative of the tensions felt between town and gown even in the colonial period. The enduring popularity of the quadrangle plan and the influences of planners like Frederick Law Olmsted are testament to this equivocal relationship between town and gown. That frequent ambiguity and sometimes outright hostility between educational enterprises and their communities has continued in varied forms to this day.

Breaking from the cloistered traditions of English universities, American colleges opened up to their communities in the 19th century, and the college town as we know it was born. Increased enrollment surpassed the housing capacity of many colleges and universities by the latter stages of the 19th century, and students began to room in their host cities. Several universities, led by Harvard and Michigan, turned away from oncampus housing in this period and embraced the German tradition of the urban research university. Reform in student housing and college curricula promoting more liberal, modern coursework offered opportunity for greater student participation in community life and freedom from the constraints of faculty supervision. Literary clubs, intercollegiate athletics, and fraternities were all expressions of this new autonomy and became institutions in the culture of college towns. Intercollegiate athletics, in particular, have become important features of cities with colleges and an economic boon to communities with large universities.

The 20th century saw an explosion in higher education, particularly after the 1944 Serviceman's Readjustment Act (GI Bill) subsidized the education of millions of veterans and the baby boom swelled college enrollments in the 1960s. Despite robust and federally aided building programs at colleges, students increasingly chose to live off campus in rental housing. This pressure on the housing market and student migration into residential neighborhoods frequently led to restrictive zoning and punitive measures in an attempt to contain student behaviors in “student ghettos.” These areas of high student concentration have increasingly become battlegrounds as student violence erupts in the streets and community interests mount political campaigns against student excess and encroachment, even as businesses court student patronage.

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