Quote:
Originally Posted by eschaton
Colleges are certainly much better at being pedestrian-friendly than typical U.S. development, but they're not entirely ideal because the idyllic "campus" built form that the U.S. loves doesn't quite work well when blown up to larger scale.
Basically the issue with campuses is that once a school gets large enough, they just are a little too expansive to be walkable. A nice central quad is a good communal amenity - I think all schools should have this. But buildings are also set back far from sidewalks with lots of landscaping basically everywhere - with most of this landscaping being passive space of about as little use as that in an office park. Lots of people hang out in it/walk through it because they have no choice. But it's ultimately designed to look pastoral and "nice" - not to be functional.
Another example is the common separation of uses on a college campus, which tends to try and recreate the 1950s idea of "city rings" in miniature. Typically you will see a central ring of academic buildings, with dorms placed on the outer fringes of the campus. On a smaller campus this is fine, but on a large campus this can lead to uncomfortably long "walking commutes." When I was a student there were times when I had to walk 30+ minutes to get to a single classroom. I did it - and it was great for getting in shape. But it was a pain logistically - particularly when I had like a 90-miniute gap between classes and realized it just wasn't worthwhile to walk back to my dorm and leave again. There's no reason why we couldn't intersperse academic and residential buildings - or even have purpose-designed mixed-use buildings with lower floors for classroms and upper floors for residence.
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30+ minutes really? My alma mater was built in the 1960s and all of the campus housing was 20min max. My first year residence was a 5-15 min walk from all my classes. My sister who attended the same university but lived in a different residence also had a 10 min walk. Even the off campus housing is mostly <25 min walking distance. And this is a university with over 30,000 undergrads. If it takes over 30 minutes to walk from the residence to the closest classroom that makes it seem like its more of a density issue than a mixing of uses issue.
I think it makes sense to have the teaching facilities clustered together, so that you can walk from one class to another within 10 minutes.
That's why my university has been expanding mainly by infilling those "residual green spaces" (and parking lots). In the 1960s initial development phase, the teaching facilities quickly sprawled across an area that's about a 10 min walking radius, and has been infilling ever since.