Tilburg city

Since the College changed its name into University in 1986, Tilburg is rightfully to be called a university town, even if few Tilburgers will be inclined to consider this a typical feature of their home town. And yet, a defining feature of the town is its total of approximately 30,000 students, who are students at Tilburg University or at the Fontys or Avans Universities of Applied Sciences. With well over 213,000 inhabitants, Tilburg is the nation’s sixth-largest town, and its contingent of highly qualified residents is on the up.

Textile

Tilburg was long known as Wool Town, one of the main textile towns in the country and a community of laborers. All this was to change when increasing foreign competition and missing manufacturers’ collaboration caused the textile industry’s near-total collapse in the middle of the previous century. From these ashes, Tilburg rose up gain as a modern industrial town with many small and medium-sized enterprises, logistics services and an urban (knowledge) economy focusing on creativity and innovation. Until the arrival of the Catholic College in 1918, the town had no higher education facilities, and the establishment of the Roman Catholic Business School in 1927 seemed a curiosity. Author Toon Kortooms featured the Business School in his widely read novel Beekman and Beekman (1950), when one of its protagonists, Hendrik van Ham, visited Tilburg: “Hendrik got up and went straight to the table of officer Lievendag. He tapped him on the shoulder and said cheerfully: ‘Well why Emiel, you in town? Come and join us. I’m here with two young professors from the Tilburg school. You know, this very high school. The highest in Tilburg. The one you can see from wherever you are.’”

Metamorphosis in the sixties

This fragment dates from the days when Tilburg was undergoing a metamorphosis. In the town center, the 19th century Koningshoeven district was being demolished, the old road system was making way for what is now the city ring and new icons were appearing, such as the Theater and the Katterug residential complex. Such sweeping ‒ and often lamented ‒ renovations, so the decision-makers believed, were to furnish Tilburg with a new look. It was a vision that has caused the town to be modernized in countless places and many old structures, including many factories, to be destroyed. Receiving its town privileges in 1809, Tilburg is a comparatively young town. Up until the 19th century, it consisted of a mishmash of hamlets, with names such as Heuvel, Besterd, Korvel and ‘t Heike. These were small communities, often triangular in shape, interconnected by unpaved roads. The textile factories that settled here in the 18th and 19th centuries often positioned themselves in the rural spaces between those hamlets, making the town develop in steady but unusual ways, even more so when it was bisected by the arrival of the railways in 1863.

Redevelopments

Remnants of this period are still visible in the contemporary townscape, such as the textile museum on Goirkestraat, the Duvelhok on St Josephstraat and the former wool mill of Thomas de Beer, now Museum De Pont. In the 21st century, Tilburg is redeveloping its old industrial areas, such as Piushaven and Spoorzone, into estates with apartment buildings, restaurants, theaters, shops and, indeed, university-related buildings. In lustrum year 2017, student entrepreneurs settled in Hall 88 in the Spoorzone quarter, and a Mindlab was being realized in the Deprez Building, with sizeable contributions from the local council and the University. Tilburg has been called a “love at second sight.” It has to make do without a classic downtown area or a canal system, but for those with an eye to see, there are many heritage sites and hidden gems that make many people feel perfectly at home. As shown by the National Student Survey, students also appreciate Tilburg, particularly for its fine student accommodation, pubbing and clubbing, events and its manageable proportions. As the town could do with a bit of a brush-up, a new city-marketing campaign was launched in 2015, also targeting current and prospective students.