CollegeTownLife Trip

My purpose in creating CollegeTownLife is to provide a continuous scan of selective news from college towns; primarily across the USA, but also including Canada and the UK.

In 1973 Michael Lesy and Charles Van Schaick's book Wisconsin Death Trip was released.

As a journalism student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, besides being attracted to the book by its sheer strangeness, I was impressed by the overview of life at the turn of the last century that brief quotes from newspapers could collectively provide.

Of course this was in 1973 and the use of environmental scanning was not yet being taught in public relations courses; at least not in the public relations courses I was taking as an undergrad.

I believe that the residents of college towns can use the information gathered in this CollegeTownLife scanning process to make more informed decisions in their planning processes. This might include:

• city planning and economic development
• campus plans
• housing (on and off-campus) decisions
• housing supply and affordability factors
• near-campus neighborhood and historic preservation issues
• walking, biking and public transportation issues

CollegeTownLife developed from bookmarks I started to keep when I did searches on college town issues in the evening. I began this somewhat unusual hobby in the mid-1980s while attempting to gather information for a neighborhood association I was involved with in the college town I lived in at the time. When the Internet came into its own I was amazed at the amount of college town information available with selective searching.

Pre-Web library searches were difficult, and didn't yield much in the way of results. When gophers came on the scene scanning for issues across college towns became possible. But the Web and search engines made it all come together.

The first iteration of the site was CollegeTownIssues. The categorization within this site developed from a perspective focused on elements necessary to preserve and improve pre-WWII near-campus neighborhoods in college towns. These usually are the established, denser neighborhoods laid out on grid street patterns which the New Urbanism movement is drawing from in successfully creating New Urban living environments around the country.

Having grown up in a college town, and lived, and traveled in them for most of my adult life, I've witnessed changes over time in a variety of college town types. An example that particularly amazes me is the Mifflin Street student ghetto area at UW-Madison, where I lived as a student, which has seen a substantial return to owner-occupancy as university students choose to put their rent money into newer complexes with a range of amenities. College towns and near-campus neighborhoods have become downright chic. Maybe it's the vitality and scale of the walkable neighborhoods. Maybe it's opportunities that the college and town combination can offer. In any case, very little research has focused on college towns until relatively recently.

I wrote an opinion piece, "Keeping the 'Town' in College Town", for Planetizen based on information collected and trends that had become apparent while working on developing College Town Issues. My intention in creating this site is to enable community members who are involved in decision making to understand the college town environment and the interconnections of its elements, and to be able to use this understanding in planning and decision making for the common good.

In 2001, Families and students living in a college town (the first version of this site) was included in WorldCat database, OCLC FirstSearch. The site's first international coverage came in 2004 in Voice of America's Croatian news piece, "Kozmopolitski 'koledž-gradici' - blagoslov, ali i pokora americke provincije (31/4/04)"

It has been listed or quoted in TopRetirements.com Baby Boomer Essential Retirement Links, the Johns Hopkins Magazine article It Takes a Village — Charles Village — to Make a College Town, in the Town & Gown Network (created in 2006), and many other magazines, newspaper articles, and community web sites since it went online.

CollegeTownLife is an outgrowth of the College Town Issues site. Over time, it became clear to me that college towns have unique combinations of opportunities and constraints. They have a capability to draw population that is unlike other communities.

It is my sincere hope that universities and the communities in which they are located will be able to use the information presented on these sites to provide decision makers with scans comprehensive enough to illuminate the environment they work within. Town and gown purposes sometimes diverge, but most often college towns work to develop progressive approaches to charting their futures.

If CollegeTownLife can provide useful information on trends that appear widespread (like the start-up businesses looking to locate in college towns, college towns becoming a strong choice for retirees, or the growth in publicly-traded student housing corporations freeing more housing in near-campus neighborhoods for families), that will be great. If it helps college towns plan for more fully livable, vibrant communities for all of their residents, that would be fantastic.

This site is for all people living, or thinking about living in a college town: students, university employees, business people, arts people, and retirees to name only a few.

Bob Karrow
Oxford, OH
June 2006