Written by Ken Fukutomi
Have you ever heard the city of Boston being described as America’s greatest college town? If so, whoever told you about Boston’s urban facade is absolutely correct. Boston may seem like a densely populated New England hub city to the ordinary, but many often overlook the vital implications of the many higher-level institutions within, which ultimately helped the city become one of America’s largest economic powerhouses. College towns in general play an important role in serving an experience, the college experience, to many ambitious students whose ulterior motives for attending may be more than just the education they can attain at these institutions over time. With the ongoing growth of these many mid-sized metropolises across the United States, the future of urban economics and American urbanism could potentially be reshaped altogether. For now, let us focus our attention on the broader economic implications of these often overlooked vibrant city communities and explore the extent to which a college town as a unified urban ecosystem holds further implications for derived growth for that same local economy.
Many urban economists can make when describing the importance of a college town would definitely be the university’s existence itself. Many large state universities, such as the University of Michigan, UT Austin, and UIUC (Urbana-Champaign), are all considered giant behemoths of universities that carry out a great deal of extensive practical research that internally showcases the university’s wielded financial ability to draw attraction to investors, and to garner research investment further. This ability is especially great for the local economy, as these outside research endowments permeate the college town as an economic stimulus. Though the network behind a city’s economy is more complicated beyond the perceptions of any ordinary person, given the arbitrary and periodic relationships between the market(s) and the municipality, causal inferences can still be made (Parilla, Haskins, 2023). Not only do university research pursuits impact cities at the local level, but they can reach regions. An example of this comes from one of New York State’s state universities, Binghamton College, which sought to reorganize the Southern tier area of upstate New York into a reorganized hub of battery manufacturing and energy storage (Parilla, Haskins, 2023). With the university’s multi-stepped approach to advance the region’s talent pool of employees and supportive infrastructure, members of the university can now collaborate to further the talent pool of employees within the region under the mentorship and sponsoring of SUNY Binghamton. Now the State University of New York can promote the growth of a diverse candidate pool of well-paid and trained professionals and employees in the area, who are also champions for the cause of supportive urban infrastructure and battery manufacturing (New Energy New York, 2019). As seen above, just from the existence of SUNY, Binghamton created greater growth in the region, despite the earlier complications we’ve mentioned regarding the market and city itself. Regardless, we can see the extent to which universities and college towns provide a grandiose support coalition to the region through providing grants, trained employees, and an inelastic labor force. Another great way to address why college towns benefit the local economy is its way of encouraging the further use of the city’s public transportation systems. Looking into the US Census Bureau’s top twenty metropolitan cities with the highest public transportation users, cities with a sizable college population almost comprised half the list. According to the American Public Transportation Association, under a quantitative analysis that Cambridge Systematics conducted on the economic impact and public transportation, transportation accounted for nearly 17% of the nation’s gross domestic product, and 18% of American families’ spending was accounted for by the use of public transportation (APTA, 2000). This research finding is especially relevant in the context of a college town’s economic environment, given that the investment made into transportation infrastructure could potentially lead to the promotion of multi-modal connectivity within the city, and the college town can become even more significant in its economic competitiveness in its very own state or region. Additionally, public transportation in these college towns gives a tremendous amount of lifestyle enhancement(s) to city visitors, residents, and students alike. These enhancements are essential at the same time, giving the laborers of these cities a resource of transportation throughout the city, without any barring high costs and low-quality transportation systems. When cities don’t provide these kinds of services, many city planners and urban economists often note the loss of economic opportunities for the growing segments of Americans alike (American Public Transportation Association, 2000).
A final way in which college towns benefit the economy is the creation of entrepreneurs within the university. According to Maria Clara Cobo, a senior contributor at Forbes, nearly half of millennials are eager to embark on their entrepreneurial journey at some stage. While a significant portion of venture capital investments gravitates towards the West Coast, smaller startup ecosystems are flourishing in cities like Columbus, Ohio; St. Louis, Missouri; and Denver, Colorado (Cobo, 2019). Many of these cities have some commonality in them, that being the existence of a college town. The environment in which these startups and sites for entrepreneurs are located is also extremely crucial. Research finds that, in most coworking environments, startups in close proximity tend to share knowledge (Roche, 2022). In the grand scheme of the college town, workers needed a provided social space such as the hallway, the local cafe, a cozy bookstore, and weekly social gatherings across the city to further flourish as a startup. Researchers found that startups ~21 to 30 meters apart saw a more significant increase in technology adaptation whenever employees and colleagues shared some commonality (Roche, 2022). Like many college towns, these small implications in an entrepreneurial birthground are essential to growing businesses from a smaller scale to a much larger one. With the creativity and innovations that flow across campus to the city borders, these small-to-medium-sized townships and cities were destined for greater economic growth. What a beautiful, symbiotic relationship between the city, economy, and people.
The article provides a basic overview of some of the most important points in developing a local economy and the simultaneous existence of a university within the same city borders. This conversation regarding the wide-scale view of urban economics in the environment of a college town is worth having, noting the further increase in the population of the United States and the world alike. A final address is to bring up a straightforward yet coherent answer to a difficult question: “How does one create a great city?”. In which the late Senator of New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, responded to it by simply saying, “Create a great university, and wait 200 years.”
References
New Energy New York. New Energy New York | U.S. Economic Development Administration. (n.d.).https://www.eda.gov/archives/2022/arpa/build-back-better/finalists/The-State-University-o f-New-York-at-Binghamton.html
Roche, M. P. (2022). Startup Chemistry and the Coworking Environment. NBER. https://www.nber.org/be/20222/startup-chemistry-and-coworking-environment
Economic impact of public transportation investment. American Public Transportation Association. (2020, April 27).
https://www.apta.com/research-technical-resources/research-reports/economic-impact-of-public-t ransportation-investment/
Mark Muro, R. M., Martha Ross, Joseph Parilla, Glencora Haskins (2024, February 28). How research universities are evolving to strengthen regional economies. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-research-universities-are-evolving-to-strengthen-regiona l-economies/
Audretsch, D. B., Keilbach, M., & Lehmann, E. E. (n.d.). (PDF) Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth. Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth, Research Gate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227466877_Entrepreneurship_and_Economic_Growth
Cobo, M. C. (2019, June 26). College towns are the next big thing for startups. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/mariaclaracobo/2019/06/25/college-towns-are-the-next-big-thing-f or-startups/?sh=a7109633b765
Image:
projects, C. to W. (2024, February 1). Wikimedia Commons.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page