<p>^^ totally agree with above</p>
<p>You know where else has an academic feel, I believe? Los Alamos.</p>
<p>I was about to mention Los Alamos.</p>
<p>Another vote for the Pioneer Valley. :D</p>
<p>Hanover, NH and Burlington, VT.</p>
<p>Washington DC area</p>
<p>Here’s a different point of view on “academic feel” for a small town. The Town of Oberlin was created simulataneously with the center of the campus of Oberlin College and Oberlin Conservatory. Both center around the same tree-canopied greenspace, Tappan Square, threaded by paths like spokes on a wheel. </p>
<p>The center of campus = the middle of town. No difference.</p>
<p>So if someone is walking home from work on Main Street, going for an evening family walk with a dog, or is a student coming to or from class, everybody intersects along the same paths. It’s funny because students who miss pets from home find they have plenty to pet as people walk by each other on Tappan. </p>
<p>Frederic Law Olmstead did that by positioning the campus buildings in a square around the town’s central square as the college began building. The best way to desscribe it is if Columbia University’s most important buildings, rather than being on their own campus and behind a gate, were instead built as a rectangular perimeter, one building deep, ringing and enclosing New York City’s Central Park, with every college building’s front door entrance coming directly from Central Park.</p>
<p>Berkeley seems to have more homeless people, neo-hippy burnouts, and shouting loons than intellectuals.</p>
<p>“Berkeley seems to have more homeless people, neo-hippy burnouts, and shouting loons than intellectuals.”</p>
<p>LOL. </p>
<p>Ann Arbor is a bit like that too.</p>
<p>Those neo-hippy burnouts and shouting loons are perhaps among the nation’s greatest intellects. The homeless? Maybe not so much, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of those panhandlers didn’t have a PhD. after their name.</p>
<p>that’s a silly comment about Berkeley. Have you been there? The campus is beautiful, offers myriad community accessible activities (first-rate concerts, one of the best libraries in the world, courses, etc.) As far as homeless people around campuses it is not much different than Harvard Square - and the area around Yale isn’t so hot either. Northampton also has a large population of street people of Goth and homeless types. On the other hand, in the residential areas of Berkeley it is quite lovely - no homeless people in the Berkeley Hills, which is where many of the professors and former Cal grads live! The Bay Area is very “academic” - but I’d say that of the places I’ve visited, Boston, which has loads of colleges and Universities, is probably the most academic - as well as the Amherst/Northampton area. For a small town version, I agree that Oberlin also fits into the category.</p>
<p>University City (Philadelphia), PA
Oakland (Pittsburgh), PA</p>
<p>IMO for a place to have an academic feel, it means more than having many colleges and universities. For example, Worcester, Massachusetts, has something like 9 colleges in the greater Worcester area. It has almost no academic feel, except for the various campuses.</p>
<p>I completely agree with Bromfield . . . which, I assume, is why no one had yet suggested that Worcester ought to be on the list. Actually, people have nominated very few places that don’t have a true academic feel. I’m not so sure about the University City neighborhood in Philadelphia. I lived there for a decade, and its academic quality was spotty – not really much like Cambridge or Berkeley.</p>