UCSD & the Price Center

The campus of UCSD was designed to maintain calm order, to avoid urban unrest and to create a place free of disruptive collective action. Located in the center of campus, the food court in the Price Center is the central meeting place for student consumers to eat grease and imbibe caffeine. In addition to the comfort of big name food chains, there are other reasons why the campus consumes here, and not at some other consumer center. The Center is inaccessible to vehicles, save police cars, campus shuttles and delivery trucks, and what parking exists is scarce and far-flung. Thus, though UCSD is located in the city of San Diego with its wide streets and major freeways, cars headed for the Price Center must chance upon one of the limited metered spaces off to the side of the Center or park in one of the more distant lots (some still under construction). While the architectural structures of UCSD loom in institutional magnitude, the sounds of the campus are perhaps less noticed but no less controlled than the architecture. Like many malls, the Price Center is equipped with a multi-speaker system to control the sounds of the space both for emergency intercom use and music. Ordinarily, when people walk through the Price Center, they hear the sounds of a local commercial radio station (including both music and advertisements) wafting from the ceiling speakers, accompanying the sounds of the people talking, ordering food and exchanging money. There is no aural evidence that the scene is not some other food court in some other mall, in some other city or town.