We All Know What a College Town is, but a 'College City'?

In this article from Inside Higher Ed, Elia Powers interviews, among others, a favorite SCUP presenter, Richard Florida: "The quintessential college town is lush and lined with quaint boulevards. It’s Ann Arbor, Mich., Charlottesville, Va., and Boulder, Colo. It’s dive bars and bookstores and movie theaters that still charge less than a meal. Classic college towns are typically considered idyllic places to live. Plenty of institutions claim to being located in one, but there are some that simply cannot. They are the urban colleges, located in mid-sized or major metropolitan areas whose social and cultural orbits extend well beyond the campus. And these are where a large portion of professors reside. If there’s such a thing as a classic “college city,” what defines it? For academics choosing where to plant themselves for graduate school or deciding among job offers (if they’re lucky), what’s important in the city where they choose to live? At a time when new Ph.D.s are increasingly mobile and, like other young professionals, thinking about living in an urban area, many are asking these questions."