Universities in the Context of its Relationship with the City

Abstract

The university has emerged in medieval Europe, which is the most fundamental element of a country’s higher education system. Various political, religious, social and economic factors began in the late 11th and early 12th centuries, especially in the urbanized regions of Western Europe, Italy, France and Britain. The institutional structure of the university has begun to develop in its environment (Gürüz, 2003). Since the initial stages of the university, there has been a strong relationship with the city where it was founded. In fact, Bologna and Paris, the two oldest universities in Europe, formed relatively early institutional zones in the urban fabric. Oxford, the third oldest university in the world, followed an urban model similar to Bologna and Paris. However, as the University of Oxford grew, it dominated the city more than the universities in Bologna and Paris (Baird, 2012). Today, some medieval universities, especially the universities in the United Kingdom, retain many of their original features. Established in cities or small towns, universities shape their surroundings and form one of the most important aspects of the city on their own (Merlin, 2006). In fact, it is possible to find a different answer for each city (and university) to the question of how a higher education institution develops in relation with the city where it is founded and what changes there; there are different historical, geographical, cultural, social and institutional structures. But there are more concrete factors that determine the relationship. The first concern was the location of the university in relation distance to the city; that is, whether it is inside or outside the city and how it is planned. The fact that the university is within the city’s borders, that is an urban university, naturally facilitates the birth of a multi-dimensional relationship between the university and the city, but does not make it absolute. Although it is located within the city, there are universities that close their doors to the outside world, but there are universities that have not lost their institutional integrity (Oktay, 2007). The aim of this study is to determine how many different forms of university settlement occur in the context of the relationship with the city. In this sense, the physical structures of the universities according to city have been tried to be explained by examples.