From campus to downtown

The walkable piece of Kalamazoo is downtown and the streets closest to it. It is not a single path from every campus to the square.

Kalamazoo College sits near enough to downtown that the streets between them are part of one walk. Western Michigan University is farther west, a real distance, and treating it as a stroll into town will make the afternoon a hike or a bus ride. Know which campus you mean before you start.

Downtown itself is the Burdick Street blocks and the grid around them. Early October is a good time to be on foot there. The point is not to link every college landmark. It is to see that the center of the city can be crossed without a car, and that the nearer campus streets belong to that center.

Park once, downtown. Walk the central blocks, then out toward the nearer campus only as far as the street still feels like the same trip. Turn around before you are simply on an arterial. The far campus can be its own stop on another day.

Kalamazoo