Locations and buildings




Buildingsedit

The university occupies a central location within the city of Cambridge, with the students taking up a significant proportion (nearly 20%) of the town's population and heavily affecting the age structure. Most of the older colleges are situated nearby the city centre and river Cam, along which it is traditional to punt to appreciate the buildings and surroundings.

Examples of notable buildings include King's College Chapel, the history faculty building designed by James Stirling; and the Cripps Building at St John's College. The brickwork of several of the colleges is also notable: Queens' College contains "some of the earliest patterned brickwork in the country" and the brick walls of St John's College provide examples of English bond, Flemish bond and Running bond.

Sitesedit

The university is divided into several sites where the different departments are placed. The main ones are:

The university's School of Clinical Medicine is based in Addenbrooke's Hospital where students in medicine undergo their three-year clinical placement period after obtaining their BA degree, while the West Cambridge site is undergoing a major expansion and will host a new sports development. In addition, the Judge Business School, situated on Trumpington Street, provides management education courses since 1990 and is consistently ranked within the top 20 business schools globally by the Financial Times.

Given that the sites are in relative close proximity to each other and the area around Cambridge is reasonably flat, one of the favourite modes of transport for students is the bicycle: a fifth of the journeys in the city are made by bike, a figure enhanced by the fact that students are not permitted to hold car park permits, except under special circumstances.

'Town and gown'edit

The relationship between the university and the city has not always been positive. The phrase town and gown is employed to differentiate inhabitants of Cambridge from students at the university, who historically wore academical dress. There are many stories of ferocious rivalry between the two categories. During the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, strong clashes brought about attacks and looting of university properties while locals contested the privileges granted by the government to the academic staff, the university's ledgers being burned in Market Square to the rallying cry "Away with the learning of clerks, away with it!". Following these events, the Chancellor was given special powers allowing him to prosecute the criminals and re-establish order in the city. Attempts to reconcile the two groups followed over time, and in the 16th century agreements were signed to improve the quality of streets and student accommodation around the city. However, this was followed by new confrontations when the plague hit Cambridge in 1630 and colleges refused to help those affected by the disease by locking their sites.

Nowadays, these conflicts have somewhat subsided and the university has become an opportunity for employment among the population, providing an increased level of wealth in the area. The enormous growth in the number of high-tech, biotech, providers of services and related firms situated near Cambridge has been termed the Cambridge Phenomenon: the addition of 1,500 new, registered companies and as many as 40,000 jobs between 1960 and 2010 has been directly related to the presence and importance of the university.

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