Charlottesville, VA v. Princeton, New Jersey (live, largest, people, cons)

[rowhomecity]

Two college towns with renowned Universities located within their boundaries.

Which one wins it out?

Architecture:
Charm:
Vibrancy:
COL:
QOL:
Diversity of environment (meaning not dominated by the university):
Schools:
Geography:
University:
Economy:
Transportation:
Where would you live:
Favorite: Why?
Not Favorite: Why?

[C24L]

I prefer Charlottesville because its in a warmer climate than Princeton and is closer to family.

[BigCity76]

Both gorgeous towns overall. I give Princeton the edge because of its proximity to NYC and Philly.

[P Larsen]

Architecture: C'ville
Charm: C'ville
Vibrancy: C'ville
COL: C'ville
QOL: Princeton
Diversity of environment (meaning not dominated by the university): C'ville
Schools: Princeton
Geography: C'ville
University: Princeton
Economy: Princeton
Transportation: Princeton
Where would you live: C'ville
Favorite: Why? C'ville (see below)
Not Favorite: Why? (Princeton is not a Not Favorite, just less Favorite)

Charlottesville is in a topographically richer context. Princeton is pretty, but it's set in a very boring area. Charlottesville has easy access to beautiful rural terrain in the Piedmont and Blue Ridge; for a long time, before the 1970s, Albermarle County was the richest county in Virginia, and that legacy is visible. C'ville is just over an hour from Richmond and over two hours (worse in rush hour traffic) from DC, but Princeton is in a very sweet spot between NYC and Philadelphia.

That said, Charlottesville in the spring is glorious in a Southern way that just doesn't happen the same way up North. There's a reason people who can afford to spend time in C'ville can become addicted to its womb-like charms.

On the other hand, C'ville has a much darker history than a lot of people are aware of (it was a leading location for Virginia's Massive Resistance to integration, one of VA's cities that just closed all of its all-white schools rather than integrate, and it was home to a number of reactionary luminaries; it also bulldozed the historically Black ghetto near Downtown - Vinegar Hill - in the name of "urban renewal"; by the late 1970s, though, white C'ville tilted progressive but at the price of a long period of amnesia about the Bad Old Days - it appears that only that only the Battle of Charlottesville in August 2017 may have finally pierced the veil of 50 years of amnesia about the consequences of that - and that would be a very good, if very difficult, thing).

While the Central Grounds of UVA (I am an alumnus) are stunning, the rest of the University's buildings are not as comprehensively interesting as Princeton's (which got its courtesy of a former president and UVA alum...). The two universities, btw, traditionally were very tight with each other - Princeton was the Ivy school that traditionally attracted Southern elites, and UVA vice-versa (UVA was the second largest university in the USA before the Civil War - but after the Civil War it did not grow much until the 1950s; if memory serves, UVA's class of 1950 was only ~500 men) - and there was a lot of cross-pollination of culture between them for a few generations.

Princeton's town area really abuts the university, whereas UVA's is a bit more like Cornell/Ithaca in having its own sub-neighborhood service area and the actual heart of the town being further away (downtown C'ville is about 2 miles to the east of the Central Grounds). I will forego an opportunity to rant about the abomination of development along US 29 north of UVA in the last generation.

[P Larsen]

PS triggered by awareness as seasons start to shift: Princeton would also get points for being much more proximate (1 hr vs 3 hrs) to beaches in the summer.

[march2]

Charlottesville

[Koji7]

I like that Princeton is located between NYC and Philly but I’d choose Charlottesville to live in, urbanity doesn’t have the appeal for me anymore.

[MarketStEl]

Princeton is in that "sweet spot" because the presbyteries of New York and Philadelphia each wanted to establish a college in the 1740s. They decided to go in on one together and chose to locate it exactly midway between the two cities.

I'd say the economy of Princeton is less dominated by Princeton University than Charlottesville's is by UVA, but the non-university economy resides along Route 1, in what used to be Princeton Township before the township and the borough merged about a decade ago. The heart of the borough is definitely defined by the university in a way the heart of Charlottesville isn't.

Charlottesville is in a topographically more interesting natural setting, nestled amidst hills and mountains as it is. And the slurb along US 29 notwithstanding, it isn't swimming in autocentric suburbia the way Princeton seems to be (at least to its east).

And frankly, I prefer Charlottesville's funkier urbanity to Princeton's terminal charm. Princeton seems to me like it's perpetually on the verge of choking on its own preciousness.

But if I had to choose between the two, I'd probably put up with all that and live in Princeton precisely because it is located where it is.