The urban campus in the forest

Yeah, how exactly do you define "campus". I'd say that MIT and Harvard have campuses. Harvard has a few even.
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
Yeah, how exactly do you define "campus". I'd say that MIT and Harvard have campuses. Harvard has a few even.
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Id say a campus is a place where the majority of the schools building are located, usually surrounded by a fence or some metaphorical fence. Through traffic is limited to university related stuff.

AKA: BC, Tufts, Northeastern.

Harvard HAD a campus, a few hundred years ago, but after all the expansion, its impossible to say they have one now. Nobody standing in allston says they feel like theyre on campus.

BU has a very obvious strip, and some areas are campusy (behind marsh plaza, bay state road), but its clearly not a campus.
 
^^Universities can have multiple campuses, even BC. You can refer to a specific campus within a university like the Newton Campus (BC), Harvard Yard (Harvard), and South Campus (NEU).
 
bdurden said:
Why is it so important for NU students to express why they chose NU over BU? Was it really your choice?
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Only one forum member expressed why they chose NU over BU. What's wrong with that? This thread involves NU so those who want to put a comment on their decision, regardless of whether if it involves choosing a university over another, should be allowed. It's not as though we feel it is important, we are just commenting on a relevant issue.
 
Here's an old photo I found of "the urban campus in the forest":

img9762.jpg
 
KentXie said:
Only one forum member expressed why they chose NU over BU. What's wrong with that? This thread involves NU so those who want to put a comment on their decision, regardless of whether if it involves choosing a university over another, should be allowed. It's not as though we feel it is important, we are just commenting on a relevant issue.
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Perhaps it was a little BU jealousy over the superior campus at NEU? :)

After my little rant on post-war design in another thread, I'll say it works at Northeastern because of the thoughtful landscaping. If it was all sheer planes of concrete/glass/steel, it would be garbage. The softscape is a terrific contrast.

Even buildings I didn't like at first (especially West Village) have grown on me as the landscaping has matured.

Arthur Caputi and his staff have done a terrific job. Any urban school could examine NEU as a case study in success.
 
Ron Newman said:
What does it mean to say that MIT doesn't have a 'campus' ?
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It doesn't help that most buildings are internally connected. You can circulate great distances without ever going outdoors. So you don't get much of a sense of campus; more like corridors, actually.
 
I entered NU in 1969. Yes, I was also accepted at BU!

At the time, there were 5 trees on campus, in the Main Quad. One was a dying pine tree that they kept trimming from the bottom up as the branches died. It is amazing how the school has grown and "blossomed" in the past 40 years.

NU was great as a "concrete" campus and it is great as a green campus. I never wanted to "be you"!

By the way, I went to grad school at McGill University in Montreal. If you have ever seen that school, you know how beautiful a green forested campus in the middle of downtown can be. It helps that when the school was built in the 1820's, it was in the middle of a forest.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/erinbutler/317188814/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bmmaran/17982496/in/pool-mcgill

and

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_quan_nguyen/54819947/in/pool-mcgill
 
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^ Interesting perspective Tom, I bet (and know based on pictures) that Boston has certainly changed a lot since the time you were an undergrad.

I wonder if anything specifically led NU to 'green' up their campus? Some change in policy or a general consensus that it should have more trees and green areas and such. Maybe there was some sort of special funding for schools that planted trees?

And I just checked out some picture of McGill and it is indeed beautiful!
 
Corey said:
^

I wonder if anything specifically led NU to 'green' up their campus? Some change in policy or a general consensus that it should have more trees and green areas and such. Maybe there was some sort of special funding for schools that planted trees?
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Until 1990 or so, Northeastern prided itself on offering a "no frills", relatively low cost education to kids from working class families in the Boston area. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts did not provide a comprehensive, low cost public university in Boston until about that time. As UMass Boston developed into the institution it is today, it began attracting students who in the past would have attended NU. Northeastern could not compete with a publicly subsidized no frills school.

The decision was made that NU would upscale itself into a national research residentiial school. Part of this upscaling was the development of an attractive campus with lush landscaping and award winning architecture. Also, NU built on its academic strengths and its storied coop program. For NU, it was a matter of survival.

It is interesting that some private colleges are now talking about offering "no frills" programs. For NU, it is "been there, done that, no longer worked"!
 
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