If Madison is complacent about economic growth as Paul Fanlund and others concluded in these pages on May 9, the city is hardly alone among its peers. My research for ?The Third Lifetime Place: A New Opportunity for College Towns? suggests that this tendency is common in college towns nationwide. But the substandard new growth that disturbs Fanlund may not be the only economic peril. Another is the potential gradual withering of what the city already has: the economic payoff from a 40,000-student university.
Office of Strategic Communication