1.
College Town, Berkshire
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College Town is a village in Berkshire, England, and a suburb of Sandhurst. The settlement lies north of the A321 road and is approximately 0.5 miles west of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, college Town is home to a large and well-known out-of-town mercantile development, The Meadows, which was built in 1988. It comprises a large Tesco Extra hypermarket and a Marks & Spencer, there is also a branch of Waitrose at 390-398 Yorktown Road. It has an area of 18,795 sq ft. The store occupies the premises of a former Safeway store, which was opened in 1985. It was closed by Morrisons in November 2005 after it was deemed to be too small for conversion to the Morrisons format, along with issues over the leasehold of the store
2.
High Street, Oxford
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The High Street in Oxford, England, runs between Carfax, generally recognized as the centre of the city, and Magdalen Bridge to the east. The street has been described by Nikolaus Pevsner as one of the worlds great streets and it forms a gentle curve and is the subject of many prints, paintings, photographs, etc. The vista looking west towards Carfax with University College on the left, there are many historical buildings on the street, including the University of Oxford buildings and colleges. Locally the street is known as The High. To the north are, Lincoln College, Brasenose College, St Marys, All Souls College, The Queens College, St Edmund Hall and Magdalen College. To the south are, Oriel College, University College, the Examination Schools, the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, the Eastgate Hotel, Queens Lane Coffee House was established in 1654 and was probably Oxfords first coffee house. Despite an influx of stores in nearby Cornmarket Street, the High is home to a number of specialist independent retailers. These include Shepherd & Woodward, Payne & Son, Sanders of Oxford, to the north at the eastern end between Cornmarket and the Turl is the historic traditional Covered Market, established in 1774. William Henry Butler, later Mayor of Oxford, was a merchant with premises in the High Street during the early 19th century. Edward Bracher, a pioneering Victorian photographer, had a shop at 26 High Street, Henry Taunt, another photographer, joined him as a member of staff in 1856. Taunt later returned to 41 High Street after the lease for his own premises in Broad Street expired in 1894. 83 High Street bears a plaque commemorating Sarah Cooper marmalade maker. The company made Oxford Marmalade famous, in June 1879, George Claridge Druce moved to Oxford and set up a chemists shop, Druce & Co. at 118 High Street. This continued until his death 1932, the Old Bank Hotel was the first new hotel for 135 years in the centre of Oxford. Quod Brasserie is also part of the hotel, located between the junctions with Oriel Street and Logic Lane, the architectural critic Nikolaus Pevsner wrote in 1974 that The High Street is one of the world’s great streets. He may have been echoing Thomas Hardys comment in Jude the Obscure, And theres a street in the place — the main street — that hant another like it in the world
3.
Oxford
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Oxford is a city in the South East region of England and the county town of Oxfordshire. With an estimated 2015 population of 168,270, it is the 52nd largest city in the United Kingdom, the city is situated 57 miles from London,69 miles from Bristol,65 miles from both Southampton and Birmingham and 25 miles from Reading. The city is known worldwide as the home of the University of Oxford, buildings in Oxford demonstrate notable examples of every English architectural period since the late Saxon period. Oxford is known as the city of dreaming spires, a term coined by poet Matthew Arnold, Oxford has a broad economic base. Its industries include motor manufacturing, education, publishing and a number of information technology and science-based businesses. Oxford was first settled in Saxon times and was known as Oxenaforda, meaning Ford of the Oxen. It began with the establishment of a crossing for oxen around AD900. In the 10th century, Oxford became an important military frontier town between the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex and was on several occasions raided by Danes, Oxford was heavily damaged during the Norman Invasion of 1066. Following the conquest, the town was assigned to a governor, Robert DOyly, the castle has never been used for military purposes and its remains survive to this day. DOyly set up a community in the castle consisting of a chapel. The community never grew large but it earned its place in history as one of Britains oldest places of formal education and it was there that in 1139 Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote his History of the Kings of Britain, a compilation of Arthurian legends. Mary at Oseney and to the canons serving God in that place and we have made this concession and confirmation in the Common council of the City and we have confirmed it with our common seal. These are those who have made this concession and confirmation, a grandson of King John established Rewley Abbey for the Cistercian Order, and friars of various orders all had houses of varying importance at Oxford. Parliaments were often held in the city during the 13th century, the Provisions of Oxford were instigated by a group of barons led by Simon de Montfort, these documents are often regarded as Englands first written constitution. Richard I of England and John, King of England the sons of Henry II of England, were born at Beaumont Palace in Oxford, on 8 September 1157 and 24 December 1166 respectively. A plaque in Beaumont Street commemorates these events, the University of Oxford is first mentioned in 12th century records. Of the hundreds of Aularian houses that sprang up across the city, what put an end to the halls was the emergence of colleges. Oxfords earliest colleges were University College, Balliol and Merton and these colleges were established at a time when Europeans were starting to translate the writings of Greek philosophers
4.
Town
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A town is a human settlement larger than a village but smaller than a city. The size definition for what constitutes a town varies considerably in different parts of the world, the word town shares an origin with the German word Zaun, the Dutch word tuin, and the Old Norse tun. The German word Zaun comes closest to the meaning of the word. An early borrowing from Celtic *dunom, in English and Dutch, the meaning of the word took on the sense of the space which these fences enclosed. In England, a town was a community that could not afford or was not allowed to build walls or other larger fortifications. In the Netherlands, this space was a garden, more specifically those of the wealthy, in Old Norse tun means a place between farmhouses, and is still used in a similar meaning in modern Norwegian. If there was any distinction between toun and burgh as claimed by some, it did not last in practice as burghs, for example, Edina Burgh or Edinburgh was built around a fort and eventually came to have a defensive wall. In some cases, town is a name for city or village. Sometimes, the town is short for township. A places population size is not a determinant of urban character. In many areas of the world, as in India at least until recent times, in the United Kingdom, there are historical cities that are far smaller than the larger towns. Some forms of settlement, such as temporary mining locations, may be clearly non-rural. Towns often exist as governmental units, with legally defined borders. In the United States these are referred to as incorporated towns, in other cases the town lacks its own governance and is said to be unincorporated. Note that the existence of a town may be legally set forth through other means. In the case of planned communities, the town exists legally in the form of covenants on the properties within the town. Australian geographer Thomas Griffith Taylor proposed a classification of towns based on their age, although there is no official use of the term for any settlement. In Albanian qytezë means small city or new city, while in ancient times small residential center within the walls of a castle
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City
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A city is a large and permanent human settlement. Cities generally have complex systems for sanitation, utilities, land usage, housing, a big city or metropolis usually has associated suburbs and exurbs. Such cities are associated with metropolitan areas and urban areas. Once a city expands far enough to another city, this region can be deemed a conurbation or megalopolis. Damascus is arguably the oldest city in the world, in terms of population, the largest city proper is Shanghai, while the fastest-growing is Dubai. There is not enough evidence to assert what conditions gave rise to the first cities, some theorists have speculated on what they consider suitable pre-conditions and basic mechanisms that might have been important driving forces. The conventional view holds that cities first formed after the Neolithic revolution, the Neolithic revolution brought agriculture, which made denser human populations possible, thereby supporting city development. The advent of farming encouraged hunter-gatherers to abandon nomadic lifestyles and to settle near others who lived by agricultural production, the increased population density encouraged by farming and the increased output of food per unit of land created conditions that seem more suitable for city-like activities. In his book, Cities and Economic Development, Paul Bairoch takes up position in his argument that agricultural activity appears necessary before true cities can form. According to Vere Gordon Childe, for a settlement to qualify as a city, it must have enough surplus of raw materials to support trade and a relatively large population. To illustrate this point, Bairoch offers an example, Western Europe during the pre-Neolithic, when the cost of transport is taken into account, the figure rises to 200,000 square kilometres. Bairoch noted that this is roughly the size of Great Britain, the urban theorist Jane Jacobs suggests that city formation preceded the birth of agriculture, but this view is not widely accepted. In his book City Economics, Brendan OFlaherty asserts Cities could persist—as they have for thousands of years—only if their advantages offset the disadvantages, OFlaherty illustrates two similar attracting advantages known as increasing returns to scale and economies of scale, which are concepts usually associated with businesses. Their applications are seen in more basic economic systems as well, increasing returns to scale occurs when doubling all inputs more than doubles the output an activity has economies of scale if doubling output less than doubles cost. To offer an example of these concepts, OFlaherty makes use of one of the oldest reasons why cities were built, in this example, the inputs are anything that would be used for protection and the output is the area protected and everything of value contained in it. OFlaherty then asks that we suppose the protected area is square, the advantage is expressed as, O = s 2, where O is the output and s stands for the length of a side. This equation shows that output is proportional to the square of the length of a side, the inputs depend on the length of the perimeter, I =4 s, where I stands for the quantity of inputs. So there are increasing returns to scale, O = I2 /16 and this equation shows that with twice the inputs, you produce quadruple the output
6.
Neighbourhood
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A neighbourhood, or neighborhood, is a geographically localised community within a larger city, town, suburb or rural area. Neighbourhoods are often social communities with considerable face-to-face interaction among members, the Old English word for neighbourhood was neahdæl. ”Most of the earliest cities around the world as excavated by archaeologists have evidence for the presence of social neighbourhoods. Historical documents shed light on life in numerous historical preindustrial or nonwestern cities. Neighbourhoods are typically generated by social interaction among people living near one another, in this sense they are local social units larger than households not directly under the control of city or state officials. In addition to social neighbourhoods, most ancient and historical cities also had administrative districts used by officials for taxation, record-keeping, administrative districts are typically larger than neighbourhoods and their boundaries may cut across neighbourhood divisions. In some cases, however, administrative districts coincided with neighbourhoods, for example, in the T’ang period Chinese capital city Chang’an, neighbourhoods were districts and there were state officials who carefully controlled life and activity at the neighbourhood level. Neighbourhoods in preindustrial cities often had some degree of social specialisation or differentiation, ethnic neighbourhoods were important in many past cities and remain common in cities today. One factor contributing to neighbourhood distinctiveness and social cohesion in past cities was the role of rural to urban migration and this was a continual process in preindustrial cities, and migrants tended to move in with relatives and acquaintances from their rural past. Neighbourhoods have been the site of delivery or service interventions in part as efforts to provide local, quality services. Alfred Kahn, as early as the mid-1970s, described the experience, theory and fads of neighbourhood service delivery over the decade, including discussion of income transfers. Neighbourhoods, as an aspect of community, also are the site of services for youth, including children with disabilities. While the term neighbourhood organisation is not as common in 2015, community and economic development activists have pressured for reinvestment in local communities and neighbourhoods. Community and Economic Development may be understood in different ways, and may involve faith-based groups, urban sociology even has a subset termed neighbourhood sociology which supports the study of local communities and the diversity of urban neighbourhoods. Neighbourhoods are also used in studies from postal codes and health disparities. Neighbourhoods are convenient, and always accessible, since you are already in your neighbourhood when you walk out your door, successful neighbourhood action frequently requires little specialised technical skill, and often little or no money. Action may call for an investment of time, but material costs are often low, with neighbourhood action, compared to activity on larger scales, results are more likely to be visible and quickly forthcoming. The streets are cleaner, the crosswalk is painted, the trees are planted, visible and swift results are indicators of success, and since success is reinforcing, the probability of subsequent neighbourhood action is increased. The social support that a neighbourhood may provide can serve as a buffer against various forms of adversity
7.
District
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A district is a type of administrative division that, in some countries, is managed by local government. Across the world, areas known as districts vary greatly in size, spanning entire regions or counties, several municipalities, subdivisions of municipalities, school district, in Afghanistan, a district is a subdivision of a province. There are almost 400 districts in the country, electoral districts are used in state elections. Districts were also used in several states as cadastral units for land titles, some were used as squatting districts. New South Wales had several different types of districts used in the 21st century, in Austria, a district is an administrative division normally encompassing several municipalities, roughly equivalent to the Landkreis in Germany. The administrative office of a district, the Bezirkshauptmannschaft, is headed by a Bezirkshauptmann, while there are matters of administrative law the municipalities themselves are in charge of, or where there are special bodies, the district is the basic unit of general administration in Austria. Officials on the level are not elected, but appointed by the state government. There are also independent cities in Austria and they are called Statutarstadt in Austrian administrative law. These urban districts do have the same tasks as a normal district, the State of Vienna, which is at the same time a municipality, is also subdivided in twenty-three districts, which, however, have a somewhat different function than in the rest of the country. Legally, the Magistratisches Bezirksamt is an office of the municipalitys administration. However, representatives on the level are elected, and they in turn elect the head of the district. Those representative bodies are supposed to serve as immediate contacts for the locals on the political, in practice, they have some power, e. g. concerning matters of traffic. Bangladeshi districts are administrative units. In all, there are 64 districts in Bangladesh, originally, there were 21 greater districts with several subdivisions in each district. In 1984, the government made all these subdivisions into districts, each district has several sub districts called Upazila in Bengali. In Belgian municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, on initiative of the local council, as such, only Antwerp, having over 460,000 inhabitants, became subdivided into nine districts. The Belgian arrondissements, a level between province and municipality, or the lowest judicial level, are in English sometimes called districts as well. Bhutanese districts are administrative units consisting of village blocks called gewog
8.
University
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A university is an institution of higher education and research which grants academic degrees in various academic disciplines. Universities typically provide undergraduate education and postgraduate education, the word university is derived from the Latin universitas magistrorum et scholarium, which roughly means community of teachers and scholars. Universities were created in Italy and evolved from Cathedral schools for the clergy during the High Middle Ages, the original Latin word universitas refers in general to a number of persons associated into one body, a society, company, community, guild, corporation, etc. Like other guilds, they were self-regulating and determined the qualifications of their members, an important idea in the definition of a university is the notion of academic freedom. The first documentary evidence of this comes from early in the life of the first university, the University of Bologna adopted an academic charter, the Constitutio Habita, in 1158 or 1155, which guaranteed the right of a traveling scholar to unhindered passage in the interests of education. Today this is claimed as the origin of academic freedom and this is now widely recognised internationally - on 18 September 1988,430 university rectors signed the Magna Charta Universitatum, marking the 900th anniversary of Bolognas foundation. The number of universities signing the Magna Charta Universitatum continues to grow, the university is generally regarded as a formal institution that has its origin in the Medieval Christian setting. The earliest universities were developed under the aegis of the Latin Church by papal bull as studia generalia and it is possible, however, that the development of cathedral schools into universities was quite rare, with the University of Paris being an exception. Later they were founded by Kings or municipal administrations. In the early period, most new universities were founded from pre-existing schools. Many historians state that universities and cathedral schools were a continuation of the interest in learning promoted by monasteries, the first universities in Europe with a form of corporate/guild structure were the University of Bologna, the University of Paris, and the University of Oxford. The students had all the power … and dominated the masters, princes and leaders of city governments perceived the potential benefits of having a scholarly expertise develop with the ability to address difficult problems and achieve desired ends. The emergence of humanism was essential to understanding of the possible utility of universities as well as the revival of interest in knowledge gained from ancient Greek texts. The rediscovery of Aristotles works–more than 3000 pages of it would eventually be translated–fuelled a spirit of inquiry into natural processes that had begun to emerge in the 12th century. Some scholars believe that these represented one of the most important document discoveries in Western intellectual history. Richard Dales, for instance, calls the discovery of Aristotles works a turning point in the history of Western thought and this became the primary mission of lecturers, and the expectation of students. The university culture developed differently in northern Europe than it did in the south, Latin was the language of the university, used for all texts, lectures, disputations and examinations. Professors lectured on the books of Aristotle for logic, natural philosophy, and metaphysics, while Hippocrates, Galen, outside of these commonalities, great differences separated north and south, primarily in subject matter
9.
Liberal arts college
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A liberal arts college is a college with an emphasis on undergraduate study in the liberal arts and sciences. A liberal arts college aims to impart a broad knowledge and develop general intellectual capacities, in contrast to a professional, vocational. Other researchers have adopted similar definitions, most liberal arts colleges outside of the United States follow this model. Liberal arts colleges are distinguished from other types of higher education chiefly by their generalist curricula and these attributes have various secondary effects in terms of administration as well as student experience. For example, class size is much lower at liberal arts colleges than at universities. Many students select liberal arts colleges with precisely this sense of connection in mind. From an administrative standpoint, the size of liberal arts colleges contributes to their cohesion. Job satisfaction is also higher in liberal arts colleges, for both faculty and staff. In addition, most liberal arts colleges are residential, which means students live and learn away from home. The distinctiveness of these attributes is somewhat eroded by the tendency of universities to adopt aspects of the arts college. In addition, some universities have maintained a sub-unit that preserves many aspects of the arts college. Liberal arts colleges themselves sometimes cluster to offer greater curricular breadth or share other resources, most liberal arts colleges nowadays, however, offer more than just liberal arts subjects, such as computer science from the formal science discipline. Liberal arts colleges are found in all parts of the world, the Global Liberal Arts Alliance, which incorporates institutions on five continents, refers to itself as an international, multilateral partnership of American style liberal arts institutions. These colleges served as a means of spreading a basically European cultural model across the new country, the model proliferated in the 19th century, some 212 small liberal arts colleges were established between 1850 and 1899. As of 1987, there were about 540 liberal arts colleges in the United States, the oldest liberal arts college in America is considered to be Washington College, the first college chartered after American independence. Olaf College as well as Augsburg College in Minnesota, and the Claremont Colleges in Southern California, most are private institutions, but a handful of public liberal arts schools exist, such as the University of Mary Washington, and New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho. Liberal arts colleges are found in Canada, including Mount Allison University, Bishops University. In the Netherlands, universities have opened constituent liberal arts colleges under the university college since the late 1990s
