College town
A college town or university town is a com-
munity (often literally a town, but possibly a
small or medium sized city, or in some cases
a neighborhood or a district of a city) which
is dominated by its university population. The
university may be large, or there may be sev-
eral smaller institutions such as liberal arts
colleges clustered, or the residential popula-
tion may be small, but college towns in all
cases are so dubbed because the presence of
the educational institution(s) pervades eco-
nomic and social life. Many local residents
may be employed by the university - which
may be the largest employer in the com-
munity, many businesses cater primarily to
the university, and the students’ population
may outnumber the local population.
In Europe, a university town is generally
characterized by having an old university of-
ten founded before, or in some cases shortly
after, the industrial revolution. The economy
of the city is closely related with the uni-
versity activity and highly supported by the
entire university structure, which may in-
clude university hospitals and clinics, uni-
versity printing houses, libraries, laborator-
ies, business incubators, student rooms, din-
ing halls, students’ unions, student societies,
and academic festivities. Moreover, the his-
tory of the city is often intertwined with the
history
of
the university
itself. Many
European university towns have not been
merely important places of scientific and edu-
cational endeavor, but also centers of politic-
al, cultural and social influence to its respect-
ive
society
throughout
the
centuries.
Examples of these cities include Durham, St
Andrews, Krakow, Leiden, Bologna, Coimbra,
Salamanca, Coimbra, Leuven, Heidelberg,
Göttingen, Pisa, Marburg, Ferrara, Uppsala,
Siena, Pavia, Delft, Tartu, Tübingen, or Poiti-
ers. Potchefstroom and Stellenbosch are
South African examples of university towns in
the European tradition.
Besides a highly educated and largely
transient population, a stereotypical college
town often feature