«Town and gown»: University in the city of socio-economic and cultural-historical space of Europe (for example of Great Britain, Germany, France and Poland)

This article represents a comprehensive study of the different types of the University City in Europe and considers the questions of development of European well-known universities in historical context of an urban culture - from the Middle Ages till nowadays. The particularities of the processes of establishment of the most famous universities in Great Britain, Germany, France and Poland are described briefly. The university as an institution makes a significant impact on the history and economics of the city (taking into consideration the questions of cultural heritage, services, creation of new jobs). There are several morphological types of university cities: medieval, Renaissance or modern by origin, with central, dispersed or isolated in suburb location of campus, small, medium or metropolitan by size. Generally the university has acted for the city as the main growth factor, especially nowadays. The development of the sustainable cities is a completely new trend for Russia. Many questions relevant to this subject are open. As regards to the university cities, to which group is Tomsk referred, there are a lot of unstudied problems. To begin with, the criteria of the University City should be determined. And the European experience - British, French and German in the first place - is very useful to study. Moreover, French cities Toulouse, Grenoble, Montpellier, Lyon are among the world's top-ranking university towns, which are - according to French portal l'Etudiant.fr - the most suitable for students. German experience is also relevant to the subject of this study, so far as German cities Marburg and Tubingen hand in recently an application for filing in the list of World Heritage of UNESCO as Europeans classic university cities prototypes. The scientific novelty of the article is that it represents a comprehensive study of the different types of the University City in Europe. Such a Siberian university cities as Tomsk and Irkutsk can put this experience into practice. The international working team of the authors consists of well-known economists, historians and urbanists. The problems of integration of the historic buildings of university campus into urban well-developed infrastructure and the ways of problem-solving are examined. So, summarizing of European experience would be the guidance for the city halls of Siberian cities: how to improve the relevant policy, integrate the historic buildings into urban well-developed infrastructure and make the city more attractive for the students.

Keywords

Authors

References