Walking around Pitt’s campus, you might notice something strange about it: It’s really not… Walking around Pitt’s campus, you might notice something strange about it: It’s really not much of a campus at all. University buildings share walls with bars, retail stores and hospitals, a stark contrast to the open green lawns and winding paths of most traditional college campuses.

Many people whom I’ve talked to think that this is a bad thing – that an urban campus like Pitt’s can’t compare to the traditional green vistas and wide-open spaces of a closed campus.

When I first came to Pitt, my friends and relatives said things like, “But Penn State’s campus is so pretty! Why would you choose Pitt?” Part of this was because I lived deep in Nittany Lion country, but a lot of it was that people simply don’t see the appeal of an urban campus.

Unfortunately for these narrow-minded Lions fans, there are a lot of advantages to an urban school, and they’re things that are easy to take advantage of and enjoy.

For instance, having an urban school means that you’re close to just about everything. On a traditional campus you have to walk way off campus to get to the nearest coffee shop or pizza place that isn’t run by the school, but in a school like Pitt, there are stores and restaurants literally right across the street.

Need a new pair of shoes? There’s three shoe stores within walking distance. Want some Indian food? Take your pick of one of the many Indian restaurants within a quarter-mile. A city campus means that you’re close to everything that you need.

And for those things that aren’t right next to you, there’s convenient transport as well because the buses run right through campus. Students at suburban schools sometimes must rely on stringent shuttle schedules to go anywhere outside the campus boundaries. But with Pitt you have an extensive public transportation network and free access to it with your Panther Card.

Urban campuses are also convenient in another way: Everything is close together. On a traditional campus, buildings are separated by acres of lawn and paths and narrow, obnoxious streets for the people daft enough to try to drive around campus. But all those lawns and paths really only mean one thing: more space between places that you have to be.

For instance, Penn State’s campus is more than 1.5 miles across. If you want to go from, let’s say, their engineering building to their indoor sports facility, then you’d better prepare yourself for a 1.2-mile hike across campus. Now imagine that you had to do that distance in the time you have between classes, and you start to see a problem.

But with Pitt, no building is more than three-quarters of a mile away from any other, and most of them are clustered within the same quarter of a mile. That means that if you have 10 minutes to get from one class to another, and they’re in different buildings, you could actually do it with time to spare.

And in case you ever want to move off campus, which you probably will, you’ll find that off campus is pretty much on campus without dorm life. Most of the houses that students live in are so close to Pitt they’re basically dorms only without the ID-swiping and security guards. And there’s a staggering variety of housing from which to choose as well, from single-room studios to eight-bedroom monster houses with multiple kitchens.

Probably the best thing about being on a city campus is the atmosphere. I think of most campuses as kind of like cages – they keep stuff out, but they also keep it in. People only venture off campus when they absolutely have to, and they miss out on all the exciting things that the surrounding environment has to offer.

But with an urban campus, the surrounding environment is the campus. Pitt not only feels like a university but like a city as well. There are helicopters whizzing overhead and motorists doing their best to bend every traffic law known to man. You can go out to your favorite restaurant or local bar and then turn the corner and be basically back on campus again.

With most campuses, there’s a hard border between being on campus and off campus, but here the line is kind of blurry.

You could walk for a mile in any direction and never really be sure when you’ve left campus behind, and if you get lost, the Cathedral is always there to guide you back again.

Sure, a traditional campus is pretty and has lots of space to lie in the sun or play Frisbee, but if you want a never-ending variety of choices, possibilities and excitement, then there’s no better choice than to live in the heart of it all on an urban campus.

E-mail Richard at [email protected].