" I love having a mix of city life with more natural parts."
Since you are willing to look outside the Northeast, take a look at Colorado College. Smaller school, small classes. Strong in fine arts and psych. Walking distance to downtown Colorado Springs. Very outdoorsy student body and plenty of access to nature and outdoors pursuits. Much more sunny than the Northeast even though both get snow. It does have a unique academic calendar structure with the block plan.
You can also look at places like Haverford which has its own bucolic campus with a arboretum, but you can access all the urban amenities of nearby Philly via a short commuter train ride of 20 minutes or so. The train is within walking distance from campus.
@codecat UWash Seattle is lovely, in Seattle and “self-contained.” They’re not American, but both UCB (British Columbia) and UofToronto have very nice urban campuses. (UCB is kind of “outside” Vancouver, but only because it’s out on the cliffs overlooking the pacific. Kind of like UCSD or UCSB of the north.). If you want to look further afield: USD and UCSD in San Diego (UCSD is a bit “out of town” really - but in a nice part of “out of town”, USC, LMU, UCLA, Occidental in LA. Emory in Atlanta (all with various amounts of "self containment).
It would be helpful to get some parameters for stats, what you can afford etc. because really, if you are willing to call New Haven or Providence “urban” there are hundreds of choices.
IMO, many of the schools suggested are not urban in my opinion, but I guess everyone sees things differently. In the northeast I think of urban cities with self contained campuses as:
Syracuse
U of Rochester
Columbia
Northeastern
RIT
Brown
Providence College
Yale
Fordham
RISD
take a look at VCUARTS. It’s one of the top art/design schools in the entire country. In fact the grad program is ranked #2 with only Yale at #1. Its a school within the VCU but gets treated fantastically. Located in the heart of Richmond, Va
a great artsy urban campus. however, It is very competitive.
a. Affordability. Run the net price calculator on each school’s web site to get an idea of whether it may be affordable. (But if your parents are divorced or separated, check whether the school requires both parents’ finances. If so, be sure to include both parents’ finances in the net price calculator, but be aware that many schools’ net price calculators are less accurate in this situation.)
b. Admissibility.
You need at least one safety that is affordable for sure and where you will be admitted to for sure (and admitted to your major if it admits by major). Start your list by finding your safety school(s).