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I was trying to focus on cities, not towns, though I know the distinction doesn't mean much in Connecticut.
West Hartford is cute, but it doesn't seem like a genuine downtown business district to me - just somewhere people from the surrounding suburbs drive to, park, and then walk around.
Downtown Greenwich is quite nice though - you can tell it was an old railroad suburb. Six blocks with a pretty continuous street wall from the Post Road to the Amtrak station, plus some urbanity on the side roads as well.
You said in your OP small city/large town. If you look, these all meet your size criteria of 50,000 to 100,000 people and Middletown is actually incorporated as a city.
I’m not sure why you don’t think that West Hartford is “a genuine downtown business district”. It has more shopping and dining options than most towns/cities under 100,000 people. There’s also quite a few offices. It certainly meets your population criteria.
Greenwich Train Station is not an Amtrak station. It’s a station on Metro North’s New Haven commuter rail line. No Amtrak trains stop there. Jay
I'd actually argue that in general the Northeast has a pretty awful collection of college towns, at least if you look at the flagship public universities.
Great: Burlington (VT), State College (PA) - Both of these are great mini-cities which we've discussed throughout this thread.
Good: Amherst (MA), Newark (DE) - Amherst is a good college town, but on a smaller scale than the above two, and less urban. Newark has a few blocks of vitality along Main Street, but the campus is mostly surrounded by sprawl.
Meh: New Brunswick (NJ), Durham (NH). New Brunswick is kinda a gritty, semi-ghetto city considering a major university is there, though both Downtown and a strip along Easton Ave have some "college vibes." Durham is a pretty mediocre small college town given the size of university.
Bad: Storrs (CT), College Park (MD), Stony Brook (NY), Buffalo (NY), Binghamton (NY), Albany (NY), Kingston (RI), Orono (ME): All of these are either cases where there either basically no "college town" at all, with the college either in the middle of nowhere or smack dab in the suburbs. I do give Storrs and College Park some additional credit though since they're trying to fill in the area with some new urbanist stuff.
Of course, there are some decent college towns centered around private universities: Northampton, Ithaca, Middletown, Hanover, etc. However, it's less than you'd think. Part of this is because the whole non-metropolitan private college system was set up with the idea that you'd send your kids up to somewhere in the middle of nowhere they'd get into limited trouble. Prestigious schools like Sarah Lawrence, Vassar, Villanova, Haverford, etc. don't really have a classic "college town" vibe.
What? The northeast pretty much invented the concept of American college towns. It is where our country’s oldest colleges and universities are located. The northeast public colleges you mention were founded as agricultural schools so they are far from major population centers and why the towns they are in aren’t more developed.
I also don’t agree with you characterizing those towns as “Meh” or “bad”. Durham, NH is a great little town. It has everything you need. Storrs does too. Buffalo and Albany are bigger cities. I can’t imagine how they lack anything you’d want or need. I’m not sure what you expect. Jay
You said in your OP small city/large town. If you look, these all meet your size criteria of 50,000 to 100,000 people and Middletown is actually incorporated as a city.
I’m not sure why you don’t think that West Hartford is “a genuine downtown business district”. It has more shopping and dining options than most towns/cities under 100,000 people. There’s also quite a few offices. It certainly meets your population criteria.
Greenwich Train Station is not an Amtrak station. It’s a station on Metro North’s New Haven commuter rail line. No Amtrak trains stop there. Jay
I started the topic bruh.
The reason Middletown didn't show up in my search when making the post was I had a self imposed rule that the city had to be its own MSA. Middletown is apart of Greater Hartford.
I was looking for places that could not be interpreted as suburbs; apart of a larger city's MSA.
What? The northeast pretty much invented the concept of American college towns. It is where our country’s oldest colleges and universities are located. The northeast public colleges you mention were founded as agricultural schools so they are far from major population centers and why the towns they are in aren’t more developed.
I also don’t agree with you characterizing those towns as “Meh” or “bad”. Durham, NH is a great little town. It has everything you need. Storrs does too. Buffalo and Albany are bigger cities. I can’t imagine how they lack anything you’d want or need. I’m not sure what you expect. Jay
Huh? Durham NH doesn’t have much of anything beyond UNH. Anything you need means getting in a car and driving to another town. Retail is over the bridge in Newington/Portsmouth. There’s a Hannaford for a grocery store but most people would go to Newington that has Market Basket, Trader Joe’s, and Whole Foods. UNH has practically no town-gown interaction.
I have this fascination with the small cities of the Northeast; especially the ones in PA, which are quite urban and beautiful. Beautiful old town squares and courthouses...maybe a small skyline...a couple actual dense neighborhoods...even small transit authorities....and then farmland.
My question is which of these small cities are your favorites, which could you see yourself living in? Which cities have the qualities of a larger city? Which of these cities could possibly go to the next level...of being a great midsize city one day!
This question came to me after pondering the immigration of places like York and Reading and wondering what attracted those immigrants to those places and what would that rejuvenation mean for those places in the future.
Its subjective but I composed a list of 13 small cities based on methodology (and boredom). My definition of a large town/small city is that it has to be apart of its own MSA; I kept it to between 900k & 275k in population (which DQed Schenectady). It can't be the head city in a CSA larger than 1Mil. but it can be apart of a larger CSA (which DQed Albany, Syracuse, & Harrisburg). Then for fun I figured the principal city couldn't be larger than 135k and smaller than 38K (which DQed Worcester, Springfield, Poughkeepsie, Salisbury, New London & Easton). I deliberately wanted Allentown and Atlantic City to be the bookends of what a small city is/looks like.
The census defines a small city as 50k to 100k fwiw.
*I didn't do a poll, poll does nothing for me, jus dialogue!
In terms of the bolded aspect, while not on the list and mentioned in the thread, Schenectady NY has been known for attracting Guyanese immigrants(Afro, Indo and Dougla(a mix of the first two groups)). Here is a series from a couple of years ago in the local newspaper about this: https://dailygazette.com/2021/04/25/...f-schenectady/
and the city is an example of something I mentioned in the New Great Migration thread, as its black population has grown quite a bit in the past few decades or so(it has quadrupled from 1980 to 2020): https://s4.ad.brown.edu/projects/div...cityid=3665508 It isn't just from immigration/migration of say the Guyanese(some come from Queens), but it has also attracted African Americans from bigger cities or some that came/still come to work for say GE, Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory or to work at local colleges(i.e.-the president of Union College is African American and the president of the local CC is also black(is originally from Zambia)).
Last edited by ckhthankgod; 05-09-2023 at 09:35 AM..
The SUNY campuses are so universally terrible because the system was set up really late (1948). We were fully in the postwar paradigm, with the idea the new campuses would be set up in suburban areas. There's obviously vestiges of the old private University of Buffalo in the South Campus, which is why it feels more like a traditional campus. SUNY Albany also has a tiny "Downtown" campus near Washington park. But Stony Brook and Binghamton are entirely postwar creations.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JayCT
What? The northeast pretty much invented the concept of American college towns. It is where our country’s oldest colleges and universities are located. The northeast public colleges you mention were founded as agricultural schools so they are far from major population centers and why the towns they are in aren’t more developed.
I also don’t agree with you characterizing those towns as “Meh” or “bad”. Durham, NH is a great little town. It has everything you need. Storrs does too.
Buffalo and Albany are bigger cities. I can’t imagine how they lack anything you’d want or need. I’m not sure what you expect. Jay
The problem isn't the cities. I like lots of neighborhoods in both, like Allentown in Buffalo and Center Square in Buffalo. The problem is the campuses are stuck in the suburbs in areas which aren't walkable to the actual interesting stuff going on in the city. So you have to either get on a bus or drive if you want to do anything off campus. This is not the idealized "college town" experience at all, which requires the downtown and the college be fairly well integrated.
In the case of NY, the better examples of college towns or places with a college town section in terms of state schools are the smaller state colleges in places like Cortland, Brockport, Oswego, Fredonia, Plattsburgh, New Paltz, Potsdam, Canton, Geneseo, Morrisville and even the area around Buffalo State(just north of Elmwood Village). In the case of Oneonta, Potsdam and Canton, you also have a small private colleges too.
To be fair to University at Buffalo, it does have a campus on the edge of the city with a Metro Rail stop and is right by Main Street in the city.
Here are street views of the colleges listed above...
Strong Italian(East Utica), with above average Bosnian, Eastern European(mainly Polish) and Lebanese populations, among others. It is known for being a refugee resettlement hub for a range of refugees(S/SE Asian, East and West African, etc.), as well as immigrants(Dominicans, etc.). This comes into play in terms of the restaurants/food in the city as well and Bleecker Street east of Downtown has a nice mix of businesses.
Chicken Riggies, Tomato Pie, Half Moons and East Utica Greens are some relatively distinct foods with roots in the city.
Big Hockey city, as it has an AHL team and college hockey(Utica University) gets a good following. Hamilton College in Clinton and SUNY Poly also in Utica are other 4 year colleges in the immediate area.
Solid arts scene between the Munson Museum, the Stanley and Uptown Theaters; a ballet company, an orchestra in nearby/quaint Clinton and more. In terms of nightlife, Varick Street/the Brewery District is a popular nightlife district.
That area, Corn Hill, is a lower income area of town, but South Utica(south of Memorial Parkway/Burrstone Road), North Utica(area north of the Erie Canal/Mohawk River), along Parkway into outer East/SE Utica and even around/west of Addison Miller Park in West Utica are more middle class to upper middle class areas of the city. Downtown is coming along with some housing and the Genesee Street corridor is the most walkable part of the city from Downtown through South Utica and even into the village of New Hartford.
it is about an hour from the Adirondacks to the N/NE and about a half hour or so longer to the Catskills to the SE. Syracuse is about 45-50 minutes to the west, Albany is about an hour and 10-15 minutes to the east. Cooperstown is about 45-50 minutes away. NYC and Boston are both about 4 hours away.
Here are some street views of the bolded institutions...
I would say that places such as Erie and Wilkes-Barre in PA, Binghamton NY and Burlington VT are other cities in the region and within much of the criteria would be worth looking into.
Binghamton is kind of a sleeper, as it has quite a bit for its size and may be due to being where IBM started. They have an opera, an orchestra, other performing arts venues, minor league sports(Baseball and Hockey), Division 1(mid major) college sports(Binghamton University), it is affordable, it is culturally diverse and becoming more so(has one of the most culturally diverse school districts in NY State), it is within a few hours of NYC and Philadelphia, it is a short drive to the Catskills of NY and the Poconos of PA, places such as Ithaca/Syracuse/Cooperstown/Corning/etc. are within an hour/hour and a half away, it has a 3 am last call on the weekends, it is generally a safe city/area and has some walkable neighborhoods(Downtown, West Side south of Main, the First Ward, the middle/central portion of the South Side and the East Side). Nearby communities such as Johnson City and Endicott offer walkability due to being company towns built around industry. Vestal offers more upper middle class suburbia and is home to Binghamton University. Endwell, parts of Chenango and even parts of Endicott and Johnson City(in their outer northern portions) offer a more middle/upper middle class environment(Binghamton's West Side south of Main/western third of the South Side does as well). It has a nice park system, which includes carousels at many of them: https://visitbinghamton.org/things-to-do/carousels/ It also has one of the oldest zoos in the country(5th oldest): https://rossparkzoo.org/
In terms of the bolded portion, I know that cities in the Albany-Schenectady-Troy area(inc. Saratoga Springs) can have a 4 am last call.
Atlantic City appears to have some places Al that run until 3-4 am. Are there any other cities within the region and meeting the criteria that have places that are open that late?
In terms of the bolded portion, I know that cities in the Albany-Schenectady-Troy area(inc. Saratoga Springs) can have a 4 am last call.
Atlantic City appears to have some places Al that run until 3-4 am. Are there any other cities within the region and meeting the criteria that have places that are open that late?
So you’re at the bar until 4am? Somehow, I doubt it.
There is a 9,000 student state university in my town. I’m in a coastal harbor village 10 minutes from it. Other than knowing some university professors, it’s pretty much invisible other than the traffic near it when I need something in Mall Hell near it. What I see is affluent summer home people, not college students. The drinking age is 21 and most undergrads aren’t legal drinking age. Most live in the dorms. It’s not like when the drinking age was 18 and college bars were a thing. I’m walkable to bar/restaurants with weekend music and you rarely see much college student presence. There aren’t enough of them who are legal so the do their partying on campus.
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