Urban universities present an inherent conflict for administrators who oversee campus planning and development. Some see the need to withdraw and create an academic refuge. Others believe a campus must integrate physically with the city in order to stay relevant. The two approaches cannot be more dramatically different, and they have profound implications for both a university's mission and its students' education. In this article, the author makes a case for why physical integration is in the best interest of urban institutions. Influenced by the commonly held view of academe, he describes three physical characteristics of an urban campus, namely (1) inward-looking orientation; (2) zones of separation; and (3) defensive building design, that can make a built environment physically disorganized and isolated from its surrounding context. However, several urban-design principles can help campus leaders reshape their built environment. The author presents some principles that are designed to mitigate the tensions between connectedness and retreat, and to capture the advantages of both.