<p>Is Ryan Field on NU Campus? Is not "Sheridan Chicago" in Chicago?</p>
<p>(what do I know, I lived in Lincoln Park).</p>
<p>IIRC the problem with the trains was having to change at Howard, cost people a lot of time. I think they've improved access from Evanston, at least somewhat, since I was there.</p>
<p>And just so we're clear, here is the current full list:</p>
<p>Boston College (Boston, MA)
Boston University (Boston, MA)
Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA)
Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, OH)
Columbia University (New York City, NY)
Emory University (Atlanta, GA)
Georgetown University (Washington, DC)
Georgia Institute of Technology * (Atlanta, GA)
George Washington University (Washington, DC)
Harvard University (Boston, MA)
Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Boston, MA)
New York University (New York City, NY)
Rice University (Houston, TX)
Tufts University (Boston, MA)
University of California—Berkeley * (San Francisco–Oakland, CA)
University of California—Los Angeles * (Los Angeles, CA)
University of California—San Diego * (San Diego, CA)
University of Chicago (Chicago, IL)
University of Maryland—College Park * (Washington, DC)
University of Miami (Miami, FL)
University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA)
University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA)
University of Pittsburgh—Pittsburgh * (Pittsburgh, PA)
University of Texas * (Austin, TX)
University of Washington * (Seattle, WA)
Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN)
Washington University in St. Louis (St. Louis, MO)
Yeshiva University (New York City, NY)</p>
<p>It takes anywhere from half hour to 45 mins to get from Berkeley to SF on Bart (not 15-min).</p>
<p>How is College Park boarderline? My mapquest says it 9 miles from Wash DC. Usually Mapquest's default location is downtown. It's highly unlikely there's public transit that would cover that length in 15-min. Perhaps a city with great public transit like Tokyo/Hong Kong would give you that.</p>
<p>Another way to appraoch this would be: for every college calculate travel time, via a)most efficient public transportation, and b) including driving option also,to:</p>
<p>the ten nearest restaurants
the two nearest multiplex theaters
The nearest box warehouse store or concentration of ten or more individual shops carrying equivalent goods
The nearest hospital
The nearest two concert/ performance venues attracting nationwide acts
The nearest major business district</p>
<p>If you did this, I'd bet you'd find some significant differences in the amount of benefit a non-driving student was likely to derive from his nominally-city location.</p>
<p>I know what you mean. I lived my first two months in LA without a car and I totally felt trapped even though I was already in one of the most happening and centrally located neighorhoods (West Hollywood).</p>
<p>I lived in Evanston for an academic year. OK, OK. It was hyperbole to say no one takes the bus. I'm sure that some of the buses stop nearer to places some people want to go than the trains do. But if you want to go into the Loop, the trains are the way to go.</p>
<p>I don't recall transferring at Howard on the CTA. The Metra (which runs right next to the CTA in Evanston) is a straight shot to Northwest station. As I recall, the express Metra was less than 20 minutes to the Loop, and entered the Chicago city limits in about five or less.</p>
<p>Anyway, it's not that this matters all that much. I've just always considered Northwestern to be an urban university that might as well be in Chicago proper. I don't find the neighborhood around NU to be all that different from the neighborhood around Loyola, for instance. </p>
<p>Now, this thing about a "major point" in the city is intriguing. Frankly, the U of Chicago wouldn't qualify unless you consider the Museum of Science and Industry a major point. The bus to Midway is probably a bit more than 15 minutes. The Metra electric might make it to the Loop in that amount of time. I'm not sure. The bus certainly wouldn't.</p>
<p>As for Austin, I've been there many times, and if that's a major city, I'll eat this stack of journals I'm staring at on my desk. The downtown area is about what you'd find in, say, Omaha. Actually, it's probably not as large as Omaha's downtown area. It sprawls quite a bit along the interstate, though.</p>
<p>The CTA does transfer at Howard (from purple line to red line) unless it's Evanston Express that runs during morning/evening rush hours. </p>
<p>Anyway, list like what the OP put here is helpful only to certain point. The reality is Evanston itself is a pretty happening town with a few skycrapers, many restaurants/cafes/stores located within few blocks of each other in dtowntown, and a giant multiplex theater; Chicago is very easy to get to <em>without a car</em>. Among the top 60 schools, NU is definitely in the top-10 in terms of how easy its student can take advantage of an urban environment with only public transit. I've been to Austin too and I was looking for a property to invest; the real estate agent drove me all over the town and I don't recall any pocket of Austin was more urban/compact than Evanston.</p>
<p>Along these same lines, it might well be the case that a number of universities in suburban locations, and even a number in locations considered to be relatively isolated, actually have more going on, that is geared to and readily accessible by students without cars, than some universities that are nominally located in or near big cities but are afforded no, or inadequate, access. </p>
<p>It would be useful (though quite difficult) to see this flushed out.</p>
<p>What people should want to know is:
How much good stuff can I get to:
1) within 20 minutes of campus? (for routine)
2) within an hour from campus? (for weekend)
3) within 2 hours of campus? (for excursion)</p>
<p>Repeated for both the cases with car vs. no car.</p>
<p>"Another way to appraoch this would be: for every college calculate travel time, via a)most efficient public transportation, and b) including driving option also,to:</p>
<p>the ten nearest restaurants
the two nearest multiplex theaters
The nearest box warehouse store or concentration of ten or more individual shops carrying equivalent goods
The nearest hospital
The nearest two concert/ performance venues attracting nationwide acts
The nearest major business district"</p>
<p>I went to UC Davis many moons ago when it was less built out. Today I wouldn't consider it urban, and back then it was definitely rural. That said, many more than 10 restaurants, enough shops to furnish anything, and a business districts with banks, etc was right off campus. Even discounting public transportation, you could walk or bike to all this. (Though there was public transportation, including a student run city bus service.) As for movies and concerts, they were ON campus. Our med center was on campus, that had a shuttle/ambulance services to get to the UC Davis hospital. I think most campuses with the little towns that surround them would give you all this stuff easily. You don't need urban to pass this test. Most colleges in college towns pass this test.</p>
<p>I just think it's a little silly to say Northwestern is too far from Chicago. That's like saying Caltech is too far from LA, Cal from San Francisco, Harvard and MIT from Boston.</p>
<p>You can see the downtown skyline ON campus, I think that's a pretty good indication of proximity.</p>
<p>Frankly speaking, however, I'm not a huge fan of schools IN the city.</p>
<p>A good example is USC. I could care less if USC is closest to downtown LA, it is located in by far the worst neighborhood in LA; USC students will have a very hard time "enjoying" the culture of the city unless they can provide themselves with a 20-30 minute ride away from their neighborhood. Same goes for schools like Hopkins or Penn.</p>
<p>SamLee,
I think that you are overestimating the time on BART from downtown Berkeley to downtown SF (Embarcadero). The scheduled ride from is 22 minutes (unless you are planning for lousy service :) ). If you think otherwise, then check the BART schedules.</p>
<p>That's what they say on the schedule but I'd never time a trip between those two places as a 22-min trip. There's no direct line between Berkeley and SF during weekends; so you have to switch. That switch often take mins from SF to Berkeley (from Berkeley to SF, they often time it so the train you need to transfer to usually is already there waiting for you). Also, the trains for that route comes in every 20 mins during weekends. It's not very frequent.</p>
<p>Oakland, California has a larger population than Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (according to Wikipedia). Comparing the distance from Berkeley to SF is unnecessary. Compare the distance to Oakland instead: it's 15 minutes to downtown Oakland, and much less to the city limits.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Actually to be fair, Cambridge is very much integrated into Boston. I actually felt it's one of the neighborhoods of Boston. It's a very short ride between Harvard Sq station and Downtown Crossing.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Otoh, it takes a bit longer to get from Hav Sq. to the actual city border of Boston than it does from Foster St. to the border of Chicago.</p>
<p>As for the bus, the only people who take that are those who are going from the Evanston campus to the Chicago campus - people who are going to Chicago for "fun" either take the L or drive.</p>
<p>oakland got pretty much nothing. i am actually surprised it's bigger than pittsburg. but then san jose is larger than sf too and san jose is super-boring. even people in san jose call sf as "the city". by the way, large area of oakland is very unsafe. i don't know anyone that said that would go there to hangout. berkeley itself is cooler than oakland.</p>
<p>That's why we're using metropolitan figures, not city figures. The population of a city using the city limits does not accurately portray how large a city is. For instance, Pittsburgh's city population is about 400,000 (ranking it about 40th in th US,) but its metropolitan population is around 2.4 million (ranking 20th.) The actual area of the city of Pittsburgh is small, which is why the population total is small. But the city is built for those 2.4 million. Also, some of the Wikipedia stats are off. To get good numbers, check out the US Census site.</p>
<p>It seems like the most controversial schools talked about on this list are Berkeley and Northwestern. Shall we take a vote?</p>
<p>I'll sit out to make it fair.</p>
<p>VOTE
Should these schools be on the list of city/urban colleges?
Check one, none, or both</p>
<p>Northwestern University _____
University of California, Berkeley _____</p>
