Urban Campuses Help Make Vibrant Cities

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis is ranked high as a learning environment by arbiters like Forbes and U.S. News and World Report. But IUPUI does more than educate individual students. Along with the other colleges in and around our urban core – Harrison College, Martin University; Butler University, University of Indianapolis, and IVY Tech – IUPUI is helping to create the conditions for the mixed-use revitalization of the city.

For a tertiary-market city like Indianapolis, colleges can be important engines of development well beyond their own campuses. It’s not just that they attract bodies, though that helps. IUPUI alone has 38,000 students and 8,000 faculty members. More importantly, from an urbanist point of view, the colleges bring an element of educational attainment. And education is one of the elements that the exploding demographic of people who are opting for city life share. Colleges help create the culture of and market for mixed-use, live-work-play environments.

Now, these Indianapolis schools I mentioned have pretty traditional campuses. There’s a distinct line where campus starts and city begins. I don’t know whether in tertiary cities universities have prompted true vertical mixed use yet. There are, however, examples in larger cities. One is Georgia State University, in Atlanta, which has expanded from a commuter school located in a tight several-block area, to a residential one, with new and repurposed buildings scattered more widely throughout a downtown that had been virtually dead after working hours.

With similar strategies, universities even in smaller cities could have that kind of impact on their surrounding areas. But in the meantime, mixed-use developers can recognize the market schools create, and consider projects adjacent to campuses.