The Revitalist

The NYTimes reports on a trend that we have been hearing a lot about lately: mixed use residential developments centered around colleges and universities. We have heard about alumni-focused developments meant to attract retiring baby boomers to urban condos near their alma mater. The idea is that they will be attracted to the diverse cultural activities, the health care at university hospitals and an environment that is vibrant and youthful. The Times article teases out another thread of this trend–rural and small town schools building mixed use town centers to project a more urban environment. These schools have been getting the sense that students are attracted to the bucolic, intellectual retreat idea the way they used to be and that they need an urban-like social scene to stay competitive. (It's an "if you build it, they will come" idea.) At the same, the colleges are realizing that the town centers will attract not just students, but also retirees and working families, who both feed off the college's intellectual and cultural activities and contribute to the urban mix that is so desirable. The majority of these developments are going up in the New Urbanist style, which is tailor made for creating a homey, urban environment from whole cloth. One has to wonder if in a few years these colleges will be dealing with the same student v. neighborhood conflicts that most urban schools wrestle with. Is this an out of the frying pan and into the fire solution?