I live in a small city that has two universities and a community college.
That makes my city a “college town.” In movies, they always portray life in a college town as idyllic and marvelous. They have small-town vibes, families that all know one another, a section of town with beautiful old homes where the professors live, a big brick wall with a fancy gate around the campus, and little shops that sell ice cream and school supplies to the students. Life in an actual college town could not be further from that portrayal. The students run around the whole city in fancier cars than I could ever afford, they go nowhere but fast food joints and bars, and the student housing resembles luxury condos more than it does traditional dorm life. There are student housing buildings going up all over the city. The students don’t stay on campus; their tentacles spread everywhere, and it is miserable for the rest of us. The student housing units are, at least, being built with efficiency in mind. One example is their choice of HVAC. The builders are installing mini split air conditioning, which I think is a great idea. The mini split a/c units allow each apartment to have its own heating and cooling, which did not used to be the case. In the past, the only way to get that was to install window a/c units, which no one likes because let’s face it – they are ugly from the outside and block the view from the inside. The mini-split heating and cooling units even provide HVAC with zone control inside the apartments themselves, which means that the energy use is even less.