As the site of the main campus of the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana certainly qualifies as a college town in a fairly pure sense. There’s certainly not many other geographical reasons for our fair cities to be anything more than the seat of an agricultural county.
There’s a certain eclecticism that comes nearly standard with being a college town (unless you’re Terre Haute). It’s a special atmosphere that lends itself to greater diversity and tolerance than would normally be found in similarly-sized towns.
But how does C-U compare to other college towns? From Olympia to Gainesville, Berkeley to New Haven, there are hundreds of municipalities in this land which contain an institute of higher learning. We are merely one. In your opinion, how do we rate?