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Ann Arbor, MI

500 S State St, Ann Arbor, MI

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Ann Arbor is home to the University of Michigan, one of the largest and most academically respected public research universities in the country, and the school's roughly 50,000 students give the city a genuine college-town identity that dominates much of its cultural and economic life, from its independent bookstores to its concentration of biotech and research startups spun out of university labs. Michigan Stadium, nicknamed "the Big House," is the largest stadium in the Western Hemisphere by capacity, regularly drawing crowds of well over 100,000 for home football games — a scale of gameday attendance that transforms the city's traffic patterns and local economy on fall Saturdays in a way few other college towns of Ann Arbor's size can match. The city's downtown and the adjacent Kerrytown district have built a reputation for independent bookstores, coffee shops, and a long-running farmers market that's operated continuously since 1919, giving Ann Arbor a genuinely walkable and culturally active commercial core distinct from the more purely residential character of many other Detroit-area suburbs. Ann Arbor's combination of hosting one of the country's leading public research universities, one of the largest football stadiums in the world, and a genuinely vibrant independent downtown commercial scene has made it one of the most nationally recognized college towns anywhere in the greater Detroit metropolitan area.

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