You only get one chance to make a first impression, so one wonders what the reaction of visitors to Dunedin is when their initial exposure is a trip down Castle St.
London has its terrace housing, Washington has its row homes, whereas Dunedin has a shambling collection of bungalows, villas and town houses festooned with signs - some of dubious taste.
As architectural statements go it is hardly the Royal Crescent at Bath or the brownstones of New York, but it is definitely a community like few others.
And now, it turns out, it is also a tourist attraction.
Visitors, who have perhaps walked the green and pleasant streets of Harvard or roamed the twists and turns of the Latin Quarter in Paris, can now take a tour down Dunedin’s very own premier student address, Castle St.
Some have cavilled at showing off a part of Dunedin which, after a big night partying, can often be littered with glass, cans, and the carcass of incinerated lounge furniture. They fear it sends a negative message about life in the city, and in the part of town where the students live.
Others have been dismayed about Otago’s students being viewed like wild animals in their natural environment, with a no doubt breathless Attenborough’esque commentary about couch burning and booze-fuelled riots.
Then there are those who fear that becoming a tourist attraction is akin to an invasion of privacy - particularly of the many students who live in the vicinity and make no attempt to live up to the area’s colourful reputation.
Dunedin likes to boast of the University of Otago, and so it should. Its scholarship is exceptional and its original Gothic buildings make an defining statement about what the original Scottish settlers hoped their new home would be.
But the people who study in those buildings - and in the less salubrious, brutalist constructs which came in their wake - have to live somewhere.
Where they live, for better or worse, is a reflection of the culture that has evolved before them and which they will shape in their own way during their time here.
Crucially, it is a culture which has endured, despite the sometimes rigorous attempts of the university or the city itself to moderate or eliminate it.
Unlike Auckland and Wellington, where the proximity of the university to the CBD or leafy suburbs has meant the gentrification and destruction of their original student housing quarters, the campus of the University of Otago is far enough away from George St and Maori Hill that the former workers cottages that generations of aspirants for a BA or a Medical degree have dwelled in, remain.
For all the concerns as to whether they are healthy and safe housing, for all the worries about student partying getting out of hand, Castle St and its immediate surrounds are a drawcard for school pupils around New Zealand, and even overseas, who as much as they crave an internationally recognised qualification also want what has become fabled as ‘‘an authentic student experience’’.
For all its foibles, and its occasionally seamier side, Student’ville is as much a part of Dunedin as the St Clair Esplanade or the Royal Albatross colony.
So long as tour operators respect those who live there, it should be shown off to the world as a glorious and off the wall part of what makes Dunedin unique.
