It’s Time to Blur the Boundaries Between Town and Gown

This article was originally published on Common Edge.

It’s Time to Blur the Boundaries Between Town and Gown
Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s Granoff Center for the Creative Arts at Brown University. Image © Josh Hallett Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s Granoff Center for the Creative Arts at Brown University. Image © Josh Hallett

This article was originally published on Common Edge.

In London, where I live, there are 23 universities. Those universities make up an institutional population of nearly half a million people. In a city with almost 10 million residents, 5% may seem a small number, but it’s a significant one, roughly the population of Atlanta. Shrink the city, and the proportion can increase dramatically. In our neighbouring cities of Oxford (population 150,000), 40% of the population is institutional; in Cambridge (population 125,000), it’s 33%. Campus and city are so intertwined in those places that a plan for one is almost necessarily a plan for the other.

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