Spinoff thread : City vs College Town

Oxford = town that is rapidly out growing its infrastructure

Lexington is a city, but UK is a prominent part of the city. Same for Knoxville and Baton Rouge. Same for Columbia. Nashville has reached major city IMO, and Vanderbilt is just a slice of it.

Athens and Tuscaloosa and Gainesville are cities where the college drives the city.

Oxford, Auburn, Starkville, and Fayetteville are college towns IMO, although Auburn, Oxford and Fayetteville all seem to be booming and may soon not be so quaint.

College station: college town

Tuscaloosa is a very college dependent city

I think you need to not only look at the city population, but (as mentioned by others) the metro area.

Tier 1 (>500,000)
Nashville, TN - 1,757,000
Knoxville, TN - 852,000
Baton Rouge, LA - 820,000
Columbia, SC - 800,000

Tier 2 (>250,000 < 500,000)
Fayetteville, AR - 491,000
Lexington, KY - 489,000
Gainesville, FL - 273,000

Tier 3 (>100,000 < 250,000)
College Station, TX - 237,000
Tuscaloosa, AL - 236,000
Athens, GA - 192,000
Columbia, MO - 171,000
Auburn, AL - 150,000

Mississippi (a tier to itself)
Oxford, MS - 51,000
Starkville, MS - 48,000

Just my opinion...but a true college town has less than 250,000 in its greater metro area.

I'll take this a step further:

To be considered a "college town", consider the answer to the following questions:

1. Is the city a State Capital?

2. Would the city cease to exist if the college were to shut down?

3. Is the city a SUBURB of a major city?

If the answer to all is "no", then it's a college town.

Using the three conditions I provided, you instantly eliminate the following Power 5 cities from consideration:

ACC

Tallahassee, FL (State Capital)
Raleigh, NC (State Capital)
Pittsburgh, PA (Major City)
Louisville, KY (Major City)
Atlanta, GA (State Capital)
Miami, FL (Major City)


Big Ten

Lansing, MI (State Capital)
Columbus, OH (State Capital)
Evanston, IL (Suburb of Chicago)
Lincoln, NE (State Capital)
Madison, WI (State Capital)
Minneapolis, MN (State Capital)
College Park, MD (Suburb of Washington, DC)

Big 12

Austin, TX (State Capital)
Ft. Worth, TX (Major City)
Lawrence, KS (Suburb of Kansas City, MO)
Manhattan, KS (Ft. Riley is primary billpayer)

PAC 12

Los Angeles, CA (isn't it obvious?)
Pasadena, CA (suburb of Los Angeles)
Palo Alto, CA (suburb of San Francisco/Oakland, etc)
Berkely, CA (suburb of San Francisco/Oakland, etc)
Salt Lake City, UT (State Capital)
Seattle, WA (major city)

SEC

Baton Rouge, LA (State Capital)
Nashville, TN (State Capital)
Columbia, SC (State Capital)

I like to describe Columbia, SC as a "college city" You take USC out of downtown and you lose a substantial part of the downtown core. Downtown Columbia is going through a pretty big development renaissance right now, and that's being mostly driven by USC and it's rapid enrollment growth. Plus USC makes up about 1/4 of the city of Columbia's population.

It was established because people in the Upcountry thought that it was unfair for the state capital to be in Charleston, near the very wealthy planter families of the lowcountry. At that time, College of Charleston was THE elite planter university of the South. The wealthy from all over sent their children there.

So, in order to appease the poor folk of the Upcountry, they established Columbia roughly in the geographic center of the state and they also established a college there, USC. USC was supposed to be Columbia's "College of Charleston"... eventually USC surpassed CofC and became one of the elite southern universities (the Civil War really destroyed USC's prestige).

Early Columbia was all about Government and USC.. Fort Jackson didn't come along until the 20th century. USC was already about 150 years old at that point..

That list was terrible. I also noticed the names of the voters that were pretty TN, GA and LA heavy so the results were expected. They would also vote Nashville and Baton Rouge as most cosmopolitan, most desirable to live in, greatest climate or best 4th of July fireworks show if those were the subjects because they are slanted in those schools directions anyway so there was nothing I found credible on that list outside of a few towns.

Moving on, A college town is not Nashville, Knoxville, it's not Lexington or Baton Rouge. A college town is a COLLEGE TOWN where the economy is SOLEY dependent on the university. A college town is also a place where more than a third of the population is made up by students who leave once school is done. A college town doesn't have a commercial airport. If Lexington, Nashville and Baton Rouge are college towns you might as well say Orlando Florida, Birmingham or Atlanta are. What I consider college towns off the top of my head:

Auburn
Tuscaloosa
Gainesville
Athens
Norman
Oxford
Starkville
Chapel Hill
Stillwater
Huntington WV
Murphreesboro TN
College Station
Clemson SC

Nashville, Lexington, Baton Rouge, Knoxville are cities with colleges in them and a sector of the city is college themed but by no means do those cities have the university as its sole economic driver. If you remove the University from the list above they would either cease to exist or would have 1000 residents.

calling nashville a college town is like calling atlanta a college town.

both great cities and a lot of fun but not college towns.