College Towns: Urbanism from a Past Era
118 comments
·April 18, 2025xixixao
hnhn34
I'm Puerto Rican and this hurt to read because I wish the noise problem was limited to beaches. Multiple cases of noisy, inconsiderate neighbors (in different apartments and cities) drove me insane, to the point where I left and don't plan on ever coming back. The way it affected my sleep during my formative years probably did irreparable damage.
Feeling like you don't belong in your own country is maddening and difficult to accept.
dewey
Similar experience for me (As an Austrian) often hiking in Hong Kong where everyone (old and young) walks with tiny speakers dangling from their backpack blasting music during the whole hike. I never even thought people would consider that.
bluedino
> I’m traveling through Puerto Rico. On every nice beach, when there are people, they are playing loud music. Now that is part of the local culture
A lot of American beaches will have signs up saying no music. As well as no beer etc but they aren't always followed.
bombcar
In America, “no beer” often really means “no glass bottles” and if you avoid that, nobody cares.
null
nebula8804
Europe might be big to some people but America is really big.
[1]:https://i.imgur.com/6Af0Yip.png
[2]:www.thetruesize.com
mitthrowaway2
Those look pretty similar in size? Especially including Scandinavia in Europe
nebula8804
Can you really include uninhabited ice regions? The point is that the size of the country incentivized car based transportation and large distances between destinations. I guess if you flattened the entire contingous european continent(from portugal to Moscow) as one large standardized country and really only developed most of it after cars became a thing, you'd potentially have the same system as the US.
refurb
I would also argue that pedestrian friendly depends a lot on when the city was built.
If you look at the US, the old (by American standards) cities like Boston, NYC, are pretty car-free friendly. Same with the cores of European cities which are much older.
The further west you go, the newer the city and the more they are designed around having a car.
alistairSH
FWIW… head the Vieques, rent a small SUV, and hit Chiba beach or the other south coast beaches in the nature reserve area.
Almost empty. The only noise is nature and waves.
rkowalick
Going to Vieques in 2011 was one of the most sublime and wonderful experiences of my life. I never felt like I was at an undiscovered treasure more than I did there: The beaches, the biolumniscent bay, the feral horses, the view over the bay in Esperanza, all of it so breathtaking.
watwut
America is big, but most people live on coasts. The density of population is larger there.
janalsncm
It’s too easy for a vocal minority to veto good policy, like building more housing. You see this all across the country, in college towns and in California overall. It is formalized as “zoning” but that is just an official way of implementing a shortsighted policy.
If you do not zone for housing you are zoning for homelessness. Plain and simple.
spwa4
You can do what rich people do: force others to take care of your problems by kicking out the homeless.
janalsncm
There are plenty of rich people in San Francisco which has a severe housing shortage and homelessness issue. Homelessness is the exhaust fumes of rapid growth, which SF and CA as a whole have experienced. Smart politics knows this and plans ahead to handle it, rather than allowing exploding housing costs stunt the growth of the city. There are many talented people who otherwise would have went to SF who didn’t.
You don’t have to go far from SF to get to single family houses, which should not be possible. They can solve this by adding a land value tax inversely proportional to the distance from specific city functions.
oceanplexian
Hate to be the bearer of bad news but you could build infinite housing in San Francisco and the streets would still be riddled with drug-abusing vagrants. They may technically stop being "homeless" if you give them all a free apartment but it's not a magic wand that will solve SF's problems.
davidjama
Isn’t it bizarre how in college short distances, walkability and building high capacity accommodations on a budget are a priority to create productive, collaborative, social and affordable environments but after college, people move to suburban hell
shostack
Not at all.
When you're young and not tied down, and also likely lack much money, you prioritize a different lifestyle and are also in college to, presumably, accomplish your goal of getting a degree and learning something.
For many, once they get older and desire a slower, calmer, quieter life, and especially if you want more space with kids, the suburbs start holding more appeal. And that also factors in constraints about job availability.
subpixel
> the suburbs start holding more appeal.
Suburbs don't need to be car-dependent. The suburban appeal in fact has nothing to do with cars.
In Germany as just one example, there was (when I lived there) excellent, reliable bus service in and between suburbs. And connecting the suburbs to light rail, which connected to the city center.
The big complaint I had in my 20s was that the light rail stopped running before midnight.
xp84
> Suburbs don't need to be car-dependent
Probably true, but unless you have infinite money, building enough housing with expensive rail infrastructure is pretty tough. We can only manage truly world-class(ish) transit in (parts of) one city, NYC, and plenty of people still routinely choose to move out of Manhattan upon having kids instead of staying, either because they can't afford enough space to reasonably make a go of it, or because it's so much easier to do the car-dependent suburb. So, the people themselves are choosing it. Whatever anyone thinks of it, there is plenty of evidence that a lot of people who have a choice choose something other than the urban walkable deal.
PS: Don't come at me please, I loved living in a big urban city, but moved out because I refused to choose only one of: big enough home, safe neighborhood, decent schools, reasonable commute distance. And honestly to stay in the urban core where I used to live, only "commute distance" was even available.
tmnvix
So the 'young and not tied down' that are fortunate enough to go to college get to experience a more suitable environment while it suits them, but the less fortunate young people that don't get the opportunity to live in a college town get no such consideration I guess.
ptero
People change. As they get older that suburban hell often looks more like a suburban paradise and those condensed anthills of a city can make one shudder. My 2c.
PaulDavisThe1st
Yeah, I absolutely and honestly loved cities most of my life. I grew up in London, lived in Seattle and Philadelphia, spent a semester teaching in Berlin, frequently went to NYC ... loved it all.
I'm 61 now, and for the last 6 years I've lived in a very small village in rural NM. Those big cities? Well, I'll go if I have to and will not complain the way some folks would. But I certainly do not love them the way I once did, and it's not because they changed.
markus_zhang
Yeah, the reason I moved away from the city. I'd even do that if I had the money to buy a house in the city.
Too noisy, too dirty and the bad traffic...
zdragnar
I dunno, I moved off of campus as soon as I could, and kept moving farther away each year. Most people lived a year, perhaps two at most in the dormatories, and only the alcoholics actually stayed close to campus.
If colleges represent the ideal social environment, count me out.
electriclove
And we were forced, I mean, highly encouraged to live on campus for the first year or two. I can't recall anyone spending more than a couple years on campus before moving out.
jdminhbg
> high capacity accommodations
I like city density myself, but you do have to remember that "high capacity accommodations" in this case means "sharing a room with a stranger and a bathroom with twenty."
gedy
> but after college, people move to suburban hell
Well they certainly aren't able to buy within walking distance of their office job. Even if housing exists, is not dangerous, or they could afford it, it won't work if a couple doesn't work in same exact area, unlike strolling around campus between classes.
nluken
This interview needs to be edited a bit; just posting the transcript of the zoom call really hampers the readability and flow. What works for a podcast is not the same as what works for a written piece.
bentt
Let's not forget that in America, when you have a college or university, you have historically created a money funnel from the government/parents, through the students, to the city. There's an outsized incentive to cater to that opportunity and get the students accessing the business areas.
Also, American liberal culture tends to follow higher education, which not only means a desire for certain things, but also a love of rules to block "bad things". This often means preserving old cities.
rtollert
> Art Deco City From Time and Jerry
You mean Tom and Jerry?
> Ryan Allen is a professor of international education at University of America in Southern California
What in the… what? That’s not a university. That’s not even a university system. The only sort of person I would expect to call… I don’t know, USC?… that has never observed the name of an American state university used in context in the English language.
Enormous red flags in like the first three sentences.
neilknowsbest
It appears to be the Soka University of America.
bbqfog
In my experience the transient nature of the college town population means that they're all kind of run down in a particular kind of way, especially housing (how many drunken ragers can a 1 bedroom apartment really handle?). It's nice that they can be beacons of culture in otherwise rural areas, but there's definitely downsides to having a bunch of kids move in and out constantly.
frutiger
> how many drunken ragers can a 1 bedroom apartment really handle?
Depends on how they were built. For some college halls in the UK, maybe a few hundred years worth?
kortilla
They aren’t failing structurally, they are just in a perpetually ugly state because a landlord doesn’t care about keeping a property attractive that students will abuse.
So you end up with worn out carpet, paint flaking, broken door handles, etc etc.
That’s why there is a different much smaller but much better pool of properties for people willing to do an 18+ month lease.
kjkjadksj
A big part of why college towns work so nicely is economic circumstances of the student body. Simply put most students aren’t bringing a car to campus and by definition now need to live somewhere closer to get to class. And on top of that the town is a monocrop where maybe the couple tens of thousands of kids are the vast majority of the population.
This is why it can’t really play out as nicely everywhere. You might work across town from your partner vs merely across campus, or in another town. Your location is compromised by definition and not benefiting from economies of scale like it was when it was at least compromised with another 40k people in your demographic with a similar commute and life pattern within 2 square miles. And you don’t have to pay a couple thousand a year for parking privileges either so you might be taking the car on trips that would have been a forced walk in college for lack of car.
The disneyland point is a bit tired and worn imo among internet urbanists and doesn’t even make sense in practice if you’ve ever been to disneyland. Main street isnt the draw. It is this strip of shops you are obligated to walk through as you enter the park to try and tempt you from your dollar. You can’t even hang out there; all the shops are packed with people looking at merchandise, all the restaurants on main are like coffee and ice cream “please leave and keep walking” places, and during fireworks display it is a miracle and a testament to the staffing that there isn’t a crowd crush from people leaving through the bottleneck as well as people staying to see fireworks framed with the castle. In these situations they actually open up a staff only alley to the public that is parallel to main street to relieve some of this bottleneck.
tmnvdb
This seems like a strangely theoretical argument, as if the world outside America simply does not exist.
zephyrthenoble
Isn't the article about college towns in America? It's not theoretical there.
A more universal example is probably towns with large seasonal influxes, such as ski towns or beach towns, but unlike a college town, these locations attract people of all ages and incomes. College towns in the US have an influx of specifically 18-22 year olds who can afford college but might not have a lot of disposable income, and most leave during the summer.
cyberax
Why not go into even more past eras? Urbanism from the era of bunk beds in flophouses is the future, after all.
Mr-Frog
I unironically agree with this. 100 years ago, Skid Row and Bunker Hill in Los Angeles were full of SROs, boarding houses and long-term hotels. The people who lived there didn't disappear, they're just all sleeping in the street now.
Tade0
I guess you never had the misfortune of sleeping in a flophouse to say something like that.
One time I had this project in Switzerland and my co-worker, who also travelled there, figured he'd save money if he rented a bunk bed in illegal (due to density) quarters.
Terrible experience, which got him fired eventually because he quickly lost steam due to having to share a tiny room with three other people.
I on the other hand moistened every Swiss Frank banknote with tears, but splurged thrice the amount on a proper room and survived until the end of my involvement in that project.
yesfitz
The person you're responding to suggested Single Room Occupancies, flophouses, etc. are a better alternative to sleeping rough (on the street).
You suggested that flophouses are worse than a proper room.
Both of these things can be true.
pyfon
As an aside you can see why it is hard/impossible for a homeless person to pull bootstraps when a successful person can't keep their job living not-even-homeless.
tmnvdb
The current American urbanism is from the past! The assumption that other urbanisms somehow represent a blast from the past, while 70 year old American car-centric urbanism embodies the eternal modern 'now,' simply doesn't hold up to scrutiny. There are numerous contemporary urbanisms, and newer approaches increasingly tend to be far less car-centric.
cyberax
The thing is, the 70-era anti-urbanism made the US the leading country.
The "modern" urbanism (flophouses, shoebox-sized apartments, 15-minute don-you-dare-to-walk-out neighborhoods) is leading only to decay of the country. Evidence: it absolutely helped to elect Trump.
m463
Another observation is that college towns are a fake/planned environment, and much is controlled in a very authoritative way. The population is very uniform and willingly gives up many freedoms.
parpfish
One of my more tin-hattish ideas:
higher ed has drifted toward more of an “all inclusive resort” model over the last 50 years where students get to live in a “parallel” version of the city with their own police force, medical center, dining halls, entertainment venues, etc. this is an intentional move to let them live in a utopian setting that pacifies them to prevent widespread student activism like the 70s
pests
I like the organic mix of university and city development that University of Michigan has in Ann Arbor. It feels like the two grew together and coexist. I do get that feeling you describe when in Wayne State downtown though
null
I’m traveling through Puerto Rico. On every nice beach, when there are people, they are playing loud music. Now that is part of the local culture. To me (a European), it is abhorent, ruining the supposedly relaxing atmosphere of a beach (even more so that the music to me seems extremely repetitive).
I could not convince anyone here to stop doing this. Again, for locals, this is their culture.
Similarly, I don’t think most Americans can grasp the difference between American cities (including in Puerto Rico) built for cars vs for pedestrians. Most will argue (including here), that this is a function of the size of the place. And America is big, and in places sparsely unpopulated, undeniably. But this is not the reason. Europe too is big. With many less populated places. And there are cars everywhere, most people own one.
It’s now cultural. Culture can change, but when combined with architecture at an industrial scale, I’m afraid the change will take much longer than a natural human lifetime.