Champaign-Urbana Metropolitan Area
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Champaign-Urbana Metropolitan Area, also known as Chambana, is a region in east central Illinois. The region is home to roughly 150,000 residents and encompasses the cities of Champaign, Urbana, and the village of Savoy. Students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are included in this estimate of residents due to the fact that they are typically discounted from the official city census as they are not permanent residents.
Champaign-Urbana is home to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system, as well as the University of Illinois Research Park. It has become a major research center and houses many companies and research entities, including: iCyt (a biotechnology company); the Illinois Natural History Survey; the Illinois State Geological Survey; Motorola; the National Center for Supercomputing Applications; Phonak; PowerWorld; and the Science Applications International Corporation.
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[edit] Demographics Overview
The CU Metro area has a total area of 106.3 km² (41.0 mi²) and a population of 124,000 (as of the 2000 census) giving it a population density of roughly 1,200/km² (3,000/mi²). Exact numbers are typically inaccurate due to the fluctuating student population and inconsistent practices used when discounting students as residents. However, official estimates place the population of the entire metro area at approximately 150,000.
Roughly 27% of the residents in the CU Metro area are students at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Additionally, while exact figures are not possible, a large number of residents are graduates of the University, many of them graduates in Science and Engineering who have stayed because of the booming science and technology sectors in the metro area.
[edit] Colleges and universities
- The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is located jointly in Urbana and Champaign and is the flagship campus for the University of Illinois system.
- Parkland College is a small community college located in Champaign.
[edit] Health
The Champaign-Urbana Metro area is home to two hospitals, the Carle Foundation Hospital, and Provena Covenant Medical Center, with a combined total of over 550 physicians. Both hospitals are located less than a mile apart on University Avenue in Urbana. Both hospitals provide various specialized services, and Carle Hospital currently has a Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, a Level I Trauma Center, and a medical helicopter service.
The not-for-profit Carle Foundation Hospital is closely allied with the for-profit Carle Clinic, which maintains several locations next to the hospital as well as other locations within C-U and other East Central Illinois cities. Christie Clinic, another smaller mutispeciality group practice, is headquartered in downtown Champaign. They are largely affiliated with Provena Covenant Medical Center but are not as closely linked as their Carle counterparts.
Both hospitals and clinics are affiliated with the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Urbana, part of the larger University of Illinois College of Medicine, which has campuses in Chicago, Peoria, Rockford, and Urbana. A teaching presence is at both hospitals, although the facilities are somewhat more extensive at Carle Foundation Hospital.
[edit] Arts and Culture
The Champaign-Urbana Metropolitan Area is home to many theatres. The University is home to two theatre venues, Assembly Hall and The Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. While the Assembly Hall is primarily a campus basketball and concert arena, the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts is considered to be one of the nation's top venues for performance and hosts over 400 performances annually. Built in 1969, the Krannert Center's facilities cover over four acres (16,000 m²) of land, and features four theatres and an amphitheatre.
The Historic Virginia Theatre in downtown Champaign is a public venue owned by the city of Champaign and administered by the Champaign Park District. It features a variety of performances from community theatre with the Champaign Urbana Theatre Company, to post box-office showings of popular films, current artistic films, live musical performances (both orchestral and popular), and other types of shows. First commissioned in 1921, it originally served as a venue for both film and live performances, but became primarily a movie house in the 1950s. Occasional live events were held during the 1970s and 1980s, including a live production of "Oh, Calcutta" and performances by Stevie Ray Vaughan, Missing Persons, and the Indigo Girls. GKC Corporation closed the Virginia as a movie house on February 13, 1992, with the final regular film being Steve Martin's "Father of the Bride". The theatre once again began holding regular live performances when it was leased to local gospel singer David Wyper in 1992. The Champaign-Urbana Theatre Company was formed to perform major musicals and opened their first season with "The Music Man" that June. Control passed to the Virginia Theatre group in 1996 and the theatre became a non-profit public venue. The Champaign Park District assumed control of the facilities in 2000. Its original Wurlitzer theatre pipe organ has been maintained by Warren York since 1988 and is still played regularly.
Boardman's Art Theater in downtown Champaign began as Champaign's first theatre devoted to movies, the Park, in 1912, and is a small venue showing films not normally playing at the box office. The theatre is the only single-screen movie theatre with daily operation as a movie theatre in Champaign-Urbana. The Virginia, which hosts Roger Ebert's Annual Overlooked Film Festival, is also single-screen, but only opens for special showings and events. Rapp and Rapp's 1914 Orpheum Theatre closed in the mid-1980s and now houses a children's science museum.
Parkland College in Champaign features a small theatre called the Parkland College Theatre and a planetarium called the William M. Staerkel Planetarium.
The area has originated a great deal of musical talent, including the Alma Afrobeat Ensemble.
[edit] Sports
While greater Champaign-Urbana does not feature any professional sports teams, the University of Illinois fields many teams which compete in the Big Ten Conference. Two large sports centers are located in the south-east portion of Champaign. Memorial Stadium is a football arena where the Fighting Illini football team plays, and Assembly Hall is the home of the highly-successful Fighting Illini basketball team.
[edit] Famous people
The following people are from the Champaign-Urbana Metropolitan Area or attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign:
- John Bardeen, two-time Nobel Prize winner in Physics
- Bonnie Blair, Olympic speedskater
- Iris Chang, book author, historian
- Roger Ebert, film critic
- Erika Harold, 2003 Miss America
- Nick Holonyak, Jr., inventor of the visible light-emitting diode
- Hum, rock group
- Alison Krauss, bluegrass singer
- Ludacris, rapper
- REO Speedwagon, rock group
- George Will, political columnist
- Braid, rock group
[edit] Tourism and recreation
Museums
- Champaign County Historical Museum (Homepage) 102 East University Ave, Champaign. +1 217-356-1010. W-Sa 10AM-5PM, Su 1PM-4:30PM. Free Admission. Located in the Historic Cattle Bank built in 1858. Features exhibits on the history of the area and the midwest as a whole.
- Chanute Aerospace Museum (Homepage) 1011 Pacesetter Drive, Rantoul. +1 217-893-1613 or +1 877-726-8685. M-Sa 10AM - 5PM, Su 12PM - 5PM. $7 Adults, $4 K-12, Free if under 4. Showcases Illinois' role in aviation, featuring several hangars of planes on exhibit.
- Early American Museum (Homepage) Rt 47, Lake of the Woods Park, Mahomet. +1 217-586-2612. Daily 1PM-5PM. Open March through December. Features historic exhibits on life in the early midwest.
- Krannert Art Museum (Homepage) 500 E. Peabody Drive, Champaign. +1 217-333-1860. Tu, Th-Sa 9AM-5PM, W 9AM-8PM, Su 2PM-5PM. Free Admission, Donation Suggested. Art Museum featuring both modern and classical art. Many changing exhibits.
- Orpheum Children's Science Museum (Homepage) 356 N. Neil Street, Champaign. +1 217-352-5895. Tu 9AM-6PM, W-Sa 1PM-5PM. $3 Adult, $2 Children. A hands on science museum for children.
- Spurlock Museum (Homepage) 600 S. Gregory Street, Urbana. +1 217-333-2360. Tu 12PM-5PM, W-F 9AM-5PM, Sa 10AM-4PM, Su 12PM-4PM. Admission Free, Donation Suggested. Over 46,000 artifacts on display focusing around human culture and history throughout the world. Features some of the largest exhibits on Native North American and South American history in the nation.
Parks and Recreation
- Champaign Park District features many parks, hiking trails, and biking trails in the city of Champaign.
- Urbana Park District includes exercise and biking trails, Crystal Lake, and other public facilities in the city of Urbana.
- Robert Allerton Park a private estate donated to the University consisting of a large manor house (now a conference center), formal gardens, and natural woodlands and prairie. Open to the public.
Public Transportation
- The Champaign-Urbana area is served by the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District, which has its headquarters at Illinois Terminal where the Greyhound Lines busses as well as Amtrak trains all have stations.
[edit] Outlying suburbs
Several suburban and small urban areas are dependent on the Champaign-Urbana area for economic and political reasons. Most of these cities and towns lie in Champaign County. Most of these areas are populated primarily with commuters who work in Champaign or Urbana, and choose to live outside of the city. Due to the fact that many of these small towns consist entirely of highly paid professors, or technology professionals who work for the University or in the Research Park, these areas often have a higher median household income than Champaign or Urbana.
The suburban part of the Metropolitan area is constructed in a way that most from the coasts find odd. Instead of a sprawling suburban skirt that encircles the urban area, the urban area is surrounded by farmland, with small suburban villages consisting mainly of residential areas dotting the landscape. Most of these villages are home to only 100 to 500 people, though some have as many as 5,000 residents. Unlike most small towns in the midwest they are very affluent due to the high incomes of the residents and the resulting high tax revenue collected by the village. This movement of tax dollars from Champaign and Urbana to their dependent areas is a point of constant strife between the cities and the suburbs.
| Suburbs and Dependent Areas of Champaign-Urbana |
|---|
| Allerton | Augerville | Bondville | Fulls | Kenwood | Lake of the Woods | Mahomet | Mayview | Mira | Ogden, Illinois | Rantoul | Rising, Philo | St. Joseph | Savoy | Staley | Tolono | Tipton, Illinois | Wilber Heights |
