Making the Grade - Discover eight college towns booming with smart development
by Jill Waldbieser
Higher education is experiencing growth like it hasn’t seen since baby boomers went off to college. The National Center for Education Statistics reports that undergraduate enrollment increased by 21 percent between 1990 and 2004; enrollments are projected to jump another 11 percent from 2004 to 2014. University campuses are taking a smart approach to such high growth. Instead of haphazardly developing buildings to cope with increased demand, schools are rethinking density, forming community partnerships, and embracing a whole new town-and-gown relationship.
What they’re looking for is, quite literally, smart growth. As universities compete for research dollars, top-ranking faculty, students, and even space, they’re learning that smart development and ties to the surrounding community, rather than isolation, are the keys to becoming community and economic anchors. That integration is a phenomenon the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy first noticed in the late 1990s and continues to encourage today. “There was an absence of civic leadership in urban redevelopment from roughly 1975 on, and it’s a nationwide phenomenon,” says Rosalind Greenstein, the Institute’s chairman of economic and community development.
Large industries, the heads of which had been the civic leaders of the day, were fleeing cities, and frequent acquisitions and mergers caused the number of corporations to dwindle. At the same time, the federal government wasn’t as involved as it had traditionally been. The result was a startling lack of what Greenstein calls “anchor institutions.” So we thought, where would economic development and civic pride come from now?” she recalls. “You’d want it to be with institutions that aren’t going anywhere—and universities are a prime embodiment of that.”
It was this thinking that laid the foundation for the recent flurry of construction and development currently
taking place on and around college campuses. Yet as they undergo their transformations into creative, profitable neighborhoods, these educational institutions also must overcome the same issues facing cities: declining neighborhoods, depressed retail, and urban sprawl.
Today, buildings hastily constructed for the baby boomer generation are being replaced with brand-new, diverse, and engaging mixed-use structures. Here are eight university and college towns that
are successfully leading the way.
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
University of Wisconsin at Madison
University of Southern California
