I’m Gonna Make My Own College List

During the 1970s, I couldn’t have told you what an urbanist was.  Perhaps someone who studied the gum stuck on the bottom of park benches.  Or maybe someone who documented the different types of sewer manhole lids.  I had no idea.

But I knew I loved living near the University of California campus in Berkeley.  Having most of my classes only a couple of blocks away.  Wandering the weirdness of Telegraph Avenue whenever I wished.  Ambling to the baseball field to do physics homework while watching the Golden Bears play a Pac-10 foe.  Finding a quiet place along Strawberry Creek to open a good book.

On nights when cooking ambitions were low, walking a block to the Chinese restaurant where I learned to love won ton soup.  After classes on Fridays, going with classmates to a pizza shop where the waitress knew us well enough to give us the slices of pizza and pitchers of beer that others had left unfinished.  (Hey, we were college students.)

One winter term, subscribing to the San Francisco Symphony with a roommate, riding BART to and from the old War Memorial Symphony Hall, and returning across the campus to our apartment in the late evening hours, enthralled by the fog-shrouded Campanile.

And leaving my car in the garage, untouched, for a week at a time.

I may not have known the term, but I was falling in love with the urban lifestyle.

Thus, when a reader posted a link to “The 50 Most Beautiful Urban College Campuses”, I followed the link with enthusiasm.  The Cal campus had to be near the top.  The list would be nonsense otherwise.

Reviewing the criteria, location in a city of at least 100,000 people, international acclaim, notable features, botanical gardens, and student enjoyment, I could see that the test was set up for Cal to excel.

Starting with #50, I began seeing old friends.  The University of the Pacific at #49, a fine campus with an intriguing history, even if its host city of Stockton has issues.

Harvard at #31, an academic powerhouse in a very walkable setting, although the range of architecture and landscaping doesn’t match the depth and texture of the Cal campus.

Vanderbilt at #16, another academic star with stellar architecture, although I find the campus too accommodating to cars, preferring the Cal layout where cars feel like the interlopers among the pedestrians and bicyclists.

Santa Clara at #14, with its rhythmic earth-toned buildings and vine-covered walkways.

The University of Washington at #11, with its soaring collegiate gothic buildings in brick and its setting along Lake Washington, a campus I learned to love during my years in Seattle.

Stanford at #3, which triggered the first bit of head-scratching.  A very walkable campus with exceptional architecture, but a place where too many students and faculty arrive by car to truly be considered an urban campus.  On the other hand, if Stanford is #3, then Cal had to be #1 or #2, right?

Wrong.  Cal was left off the list completely.  It was an egregious blunder.  The writer is lucky that the website on which he posts doesn’t allow comments.  I’m sure that many would have complained about their particular favorite being omitted, but none of the omissions would have been as absurd as Cal.

Luckily, I don’t need validation from an internet writer with a poor sense of quality control.  I have my memories of my time at Cal and my regular visits ever since.  Plus, I have the other urban campuses that I’ve had the good fortune to visit.  So I’ve begun to develop my own list of favorite urban schools.

Iowa State where I first realized the collegiate urbanism was a distinctive and stable type of urbanism.

The University of Pittsburgh with its soaring Cathedral of Learning.

West Virginia University with its grand Woodburn Hall, where the interface between the campus and the host city of Morgantown is complicated but likely enhanced by the steep West Virginia terrain.

Furthermore, I’ll be able to expand my collegiate urbanism exposure this summer.  Traveling with my regular summer traveling companions, seen wandering aimlessly in the Cathedral of Learning photo, we’ll tour the South, looking for minor league baseball, distinctive brewpubs, and good barbecue.  And, because they’re willing to humor me in the hours before beer is socially acceptable, we’ll even visit a few urban hotspots.

Even with its fatal flaw, the 50 Most Beautiful list suggests Tulane University in New Orleans, Rhodes College in Memphis, and Belmont College in Nashville, all of which are on travel route.  Also, a return visit to Vanderbilt seems reasonable.

If all goes well, I’ll have new college urbanism insights to share before the summer is over, while also being several steps closer to have my own Top Urban Campuses list.  I won’t promise that Cal will be in the top spot on that list, but it will be hard to displace the Berkeley campus.

(By the way, Newsweek also has a list of the 25 Most Desirable Urban Schools, a list in which Cal is rightfully included.)

In the course of recently writing about alternative locations for the second SMART station in Petaluma, I offered an unconventional possibility.  To my surprise, a few folks have rallied to support the idea.  I don’t think we’re anywhere near a critical mass, but I’ll again write about the idea in my next post to see how deep the support might be.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Widening Youthful Horizons by Transit

In my last post, I wrote about the role of pedestrian outings, especially those that include slightly daring retail purchases, in widening the experiences of youths, helping them become familiar with their environment and putting them on paths to more productive and contented lives.

But on foot, or even on bicycle, isn’t the only way to expand youthful horizons.  Transit can be a powerful tool in delivering new experiences to youths.

I regret that the communities in which I grew up didn’t have transit systems and am thrilled that youths today have more transit access.  However, I’m concerned that many youths aren’t taking advantage of the opportunities.  Much like saying that “Those who don’t read are no better off than those who can’t”, “Those who don’t hop on-board a bus are no better off than those who don’t have transit access.”

I recall talking with a transit consultant who lives in southern Contra Costa County.  His children were fully transit-integrated, having ridden buses and trains from their earliest memories.  But his son found that many of the fellow students in his drivable suburban high school didn’t understand the opportunity to see new places via transit.

The young man saw a chance to make a few bucks.  For a fee, he would escort a group of classmates to the nearest BART station, show them how to use the ticket machines, educate them on the BART routes, and ride with them into the Mission District of San Francisco.

The students would come up out of the BART station, barely an hour away from their familiar suburban surroundings, and find themselves surrounded by hipsters and tacquerias, without an adult chaperone in sight.  The BART train was nearly as miraculous as a time machine.

Unfortunately, BART doesn’t extend into the North Bay.  Our transit opportunities, even with the coming SMART train, tend to be more modest, with few hipsters or tacquerias to be seen.  But there are still opportunities for youths to expand the breadth of their daily lives.

Petaluma Transit has bus access to a good number of interesting destinations.  The Boulevard Cinemas, the Boulevard Lanes bowling alley, the Swim Center, the Petaluma Community Center at Lucchesi Park, and the Factory Outlet Malls are only short walks from bus stops.  With slightly longer walks, destinations such as Shollenberger Park can also be reached.

Even better, Petaluma Transit offers summer passes to students, allowing unlimited rides for $24.  For less than $3 per week, a student on summer break can reach much of the community, without relying on an adult with a car.  (I sit on the City of Petaluma Transit Advisory Committee, which reviews many of the policy and operation directions of Petaluma Transit, so am familiar with the summer pass program.)

But sales of the summer pass have never been strong.  Nor do many students ride the bus during summer vacation.

The lack of summer use is sufficiently concerning to Petaluma Transit that they’ve polled students on the subject.  As with any polling effort, there are numerous insights that can be gleaned, but two particularly caught my eye.

First, students said they couldn’t think of good destinations.  I agree that the Mission District isn’t convenient available by transit from the North Bay, but above I noted several destinations that have to be more appealing than hanging out in a bedroom strumming an ill-tuned guitar.  The excuse speaks of intellectual indolence, but it’s a front on which Petaluma Transit can make headway through education.

Second, and more worrisome, students noted that their parents wouldn’t let them venture onto the bus system, presumably out of safety concerns.

The fear of public places, especially regarding youth, has become an increasingly heard concern.  In a recent public meeting, a city councilmember began to wax nostalgically about riding Golden Gate Transit at age twelve to visit uncles and aunts in San Francisco.  He then caught himself, remembering that the meeting was being televised, and quickly backtracked, saying that he wouldn’t recommend that any current twelve-year-olds ride Golden Gate Transit into the City.

I agree that someone is more likely to meet sketchy folks on a bus than sitting on the living room couch playing video games.  But we’re equally likely to run across dodgy folks in a grocery store or a public park.  Besides, if our goal is to completely isolate our children from any risk, we’d be better off encasing them in bubble-wrap and propping them in the corner.

But if our goal, which I endorse, is to give our children the training to be effective and happy adults, the better course is to accept the slight risks of public interaction and to encourage them to learn how to navigate in the real world.  Riding a bus to a summer day of mild adventure is a fine start.

As a Cal graduate, I’ve often been asked over the years by anxious parents about how best to prepare their offspring for college years at Berkeley.  I assume they were expecting answers about academic preparation or developing good study habits.

But the advice I consistently offered was to give their child a chance to experience the real world before arrival in Berkeley.  If the first time a freshman encounters an unsavory personality is on Telegraph Avenue thirty minutes after Mom and Dad unloaded him at the dorm and headed home, that’s a recipe for disaster.

Of course, downtown Petaluma is nothing like downtown Berkeley.  But that makes it a good place to learn the skills of public interaction, and of learning to say “No”, before the stakes in the game of life becomes higher.

If you have children, I encourage you to research the summer transit programs in your community.  It might offer great experiences and lessons to your child.  And even if you don’t have children, your thoughts on how to make transit a better experience for youths are still welcome in this forum.

Schedule Note

Reminder: The March meeting of Petaluma Urban Chat will be Tuesday, March 11.  We’ll convene at 5:30pm.  We meet at the Aqus Café at 2nd and H Streets.

We’ll be discussing the first five chapters of “Happy City”.  Author Charles Montgomery takes the hypothesis that human happiness can be fostered by well-designed urban settings and embarks on a study of both happiness and urban design.  It’s well-researched, engagingly written, and worth your time.

But even if you haven’t yet read the first five chapters, you should enjoy the conversation, which I expect to be insightful and far-ranging.   All are welcome.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

College Urbanism

While traveling in the Midwest this past summer, my traveling companion and I took a day trip to Ames, Iowa, home of Iowa State.

Sidenote: On the freeway between Des Moines and Ames, we noted an exit for “High Trestle”.  It sounded vaguely interesting, but not intriguing enough to take the offramp.  A few weeks after my return home, I learned that the High Trestle, which involves neon lighting and other decoration on a former railroad trestle, is one of the top ten public art projects in the U.S.  Oops.

Despite that oversight, Ames was worth the trip.  The campus sprawled more than I would have liked.  As a Cal grad, I remain partial to campuses that are compact and highly walkable.  But touring the campus and surrounding residential districts made for an enjoyable day.

Of particular interest to me were the first blocks of Welch Avenue immediately south of campus, an area known as Campus Town.

While walking through Campus Town, it struck me that college urbanism is a specific form of urbanism, one that is particularly pure and illustrative.

College urbanism is a highly functional, almost distilled, form of urbanism.  It’s a fundamentally walkable setting that serves its residents well, but has neither frills nor an upper end.  Most of the buildings are aging and held together with duct tape.  The retail focus is directed like a laser at the needs of students living for the first time away from the parental roof.  Plentiful alcohol, cheap food, places where one can sit and talk until after midnight, and perhaps a small grocery store pretty much cover it.

And the district adjoining a college urban core is usually dense multi-family dwellings, whether dorms, co-ops, fraternities, sororities, or apartments.  Owner-occupied real estate, whether condominiums or single-family homes, is rare and usually located further from the core.

Not every college exhibits college urbanism.  Colleges that are primarily commuter schools don’t.  Nor do schools that sprawl so far that campus shuttles are used, undermining the need for walkable districts at the campus edges.  Another exception is colleges where many students own cars and aren’t dependent on walkable locations.

But where none of those exist, college urbanism can flourish.  On the Cal campus, Telegraph Avenue would seem to be an example of college urbanism known nationwide.  But most Cal students know that Telegraph has become a caricature of itself.  Durant Avenue is where the real students go for their retail and entertainment needs.

As a Cal engineering student, the Northside was more my natural habitat.  The first block of Euclid Avenue above campus was where I learned to appreciate Asian food, played liar’s dice every Friday evening, caught the occasional movie, and even did some grocery shopping. 

And today, forty years later, Northside doesn’t look particularly different.

College urbanism can have remarkable staying power.  Gentrification is rare.  For one, people with more money usually don’t want to live surrounded by students.  Also, there is always a new generation of economically-strapped but eager-for-fun college students to sustain the existing businesses.

In some places, college urbanism is muted by interaction with the broader community.  The downtown core of Chico, immediately south of the Chico State campus, is an example.  Elements of college urbanism are intermingled with stores and restaurants that serve to the more mature members of the community.  It’s a more sedate form of college urbanism, but still attractive.  And the economic power of the students provides a base that stabilizes a downtown that might otherwise be at risk.

Davis offers a type of urbanism similar to that of Chico, where the UC Davis students and town people often mingle.  From my one visit to the proximity of the University of the Pacific campus in Stockton, the same balance seemed to exist there.  Another example is Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, where the retail and entertainment offerings are a full step above either Southside or Northside.  It’s where the parents of Cal students go for dinner when visiting Berkeley.

Looking back at Ames, Campus Town felt much like Northside in Berkeley.  Although there was a greater accommodation for cars, which detracted from the urbanism.

Also, Campus Town offers a good illustration of why college urbanism is usually composed of older buildings.  Trying to build new structures that meet the price points of college students can result in unfortunate architectural compromises, such as the Welch Crown Center.  It would have been better to have bought more rolls of duct tape.

I’m unsure where the summer of 2014 will take me, but I’ll be paying particular attention to the periphery of college campuses whenever I can.  I’ll likely see some solid but unadorned urbanism.

(Note: All photos are of Campus Town at Iowa State.)

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)