We are members at Willi Co-op and do enjoy the rail trails. (I can bike to the Hop River Trail from my house—though it’s a long ride out to there.) Still would never call it beautiful Will have to check out the Prospect Hill neighborhood. Maybe it’ll change my mind.
100% a college town IMO, not even a question in my categorization (once again, I agree others my disagree).
I think Palo Alto is too, yes there is a lot of other things going on, but many are a result of the university (if you go back far enough)
And in Boston, especially you include academic medical centers, it is a large part of economy, in terms of employment…if you live there (which I have) you will almost certainly have someone in your circle who works at a Harvard/MIT/BU/Northeastern…etc.
I think this one is debatable… I actually think of it more as a coast guard/navy area, but does have 2, well-known, colleges there too so will allow it:)
I’m not sure I can agree with that. And I sent one of my kids to college in Boston at BC while another did graduate work at Simmons when she lived in Boston. Cambridge is clearly a college town. Harvard is right in the heart of downtown, MIT is just down the street, and Lesley is just around the corner.
But is Boston like that? Suffolk, which is just a couple of office buildings is the only one which is on the Common in the heart of downtown and you wouldn’t even know it’s there. Same for Emerson. BC is on the outskirts, partly in Newton, and UMass Boston is hidden away down by the water well south of downtown. BU has to hang banners to let you know a college is there. When I drive by Northeastern, I know it’s there but that’s about it. There are many other smaller colleges, Emerson, Mass College of Art, Berklee and the other conservatories, MCPHC, Emanuel, Tufts Museum School of Fine Arts, etc. do they really have a big presence.
Frankly, I can hardly walk through a neighborhood in NYC and not walk past a college. The Village is just loaded with them and they do have a presence - NYU, Cooper Union, the New School, Parsons School of Design. A little farther up the East Side is Baruch and up the West Side is FIT, Touro, and then at Lincoln Center are Juilliard and Fordham. When you get up to Morningside Heights, there’s another educational strip - Manhattan School of Music, Columbia, Barnard, Bank Street, Union Theological Seminary, Jewish Theological Seminary, City College a few blocks farther up, and then Yeshiva beyond that. That’s without mentioning colleges out in the boroughs which dominate their neighborhoods like Fordham and Manhattan in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Pratt, Queens and St. John’s.
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I agree that the medical centers have a big presence in Boston. Longwood alone is a neighborhood in itself. And Mass General is a big presence. But even though they have med schools, are they really colleges in the sense of what we think of as colleges? Harvard and MIT are in Cambridge, which I agree is a college town.
I dunno, when I think of New London I think of that whole stretch of I95 beach towns (Mystic, Westerly, Watch Hill, etc.). I know these are different places (some in different states), but that’s the vibe I remember. But not a hill I would die on.
In NYC…when the college kids move back a news story/something people talk about? Does the city feel different when students are back in September? Do people adjust traffic patterns? I don’t think so IME……they do in Boston IME. I have lived in both places over my life.. though NYC a more limited about of time..
Anyway, others can choose to disagree:) totally fair…
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The year my kid started at BU (2003) there were actually articles about the large number of colleges students in Boston, and how that increased the population by a lot…I want to say 200,000 people. Which is be believable.
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The neighborhoods feel different in NYC. Parking- you notice it immediately. Congestion- hard to ignore. Stuff on the sidewalk when the kids move out in May; that same stuff getting hauled into dorms and apartments in August. But it’s concentrated. Baruch has many commuters who come in by subway and train, so you don’t feel the congestion in midtown the way you do around NYU or Columbia.
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By that measure, wouldn’t Philadelphia come into play? Not sure of its overall economic impact, but West Philadelphia is practically a UPenn vassal state, especially if you count all the hospitals in the area. Add Drexel and Curtis Institute to the mix (the latter completing the circuit to a walkable downtown) and *voila*.
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I’m not sure the Wesleyan tag should still be on this thread. Really we are discussing all of the colleges on that list, not just Wesleyan.
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I don’t at all, but come at it differently.
Boston is a completely different town when the kids are gone and replaced by tourists in the summer. My favorite time of year.
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It was never much of a contest, was it?
I feel like if a place like, say, State College represents the Platonic ideal of a college town, it then becomes a question of how much variation from that ideal you are willing to accept in something you would still call a college town.
And in fact I think the most interesting discussions would often be less trying to decide yay or nay overall, but rather discussing ways in which yay, and ways in which nay.
My sense of Connecticut is it is indeed pretty short on the strict State College model. I’ve actually never been there, but even Storrs, by reputation, might actually be too small to really count as a “town” (I have heard people call it a “village”). But again, this is most interesting to me as a question of degrees.
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I would say that this applies to Princeton as well.
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My daughter said the author of the article probably got paid $45 to write it. You get what you pay for…
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As long as no one thinks it was written by me. 
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I live in CT, and have been to Storrs. It’s a town, not a village. If you want to see a CT village, head out to Norfolk or Litchfield. Those are villages.
And yes, I think Storrs is a college town…but I also don’t think it’s what I would call beautiful.
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It is but it isn’t. I think it depends on how one thinks of a college town. On one hand the university is very much part of the ethos of the town, but on the other hand it is very insular and student life doesn’t spill over much. There is still an overwhelming sense of wealthy suburban family town vs college town IMO, even if everyone is wearing black and orange. And no one can deny it is, in fact, beautiful.
That’s almost the inverse of Wesleyan. For a long time, I thought it was the town that was insular and it was Wesleyan students who had to adopt the protective covering of sweatpants and t-shirts to avoid calling attention to themselves as they went about being normal teenagers. But in reality, I think it’s rare to see college kids flaunting their wealth these days, especially in the northeast.
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