The role of a university in a local society changes according to the trend of an age. Universities in this period play an important role for the local economy by opening their facilities to local residents and holding various cultural and liberal arts courses. In this circumstance, a university’s surrounding area may be perceived to be in strongly mutual relations with the university. Currently, some areas designated as university district unit planning areas in the city of Seoul area include obsolete buildings and infrastructure, and unvitalized local economies require improvement. In order for these areas to be equipped with their own respective competitiveness, it is necessary not to organize physical elements such as buildings and roads, but to set their own unique images. As for a measure to vitalize a university area’s local community, the purpose of this study is to draw out regions’ own unique images by university by establishing the respective regions’ own images and by making an assumption at the same time that forming positive placeness must be prioritized. Also, this study has reviewed factors affecting the formation of placeness and their relationships among one another. The study was conducted largely through literature and field studies, and newspaper analyses, field studies, and survey studies were conducted on regions nearby Hanyang University, Sookmyung Women’s University, Sungkyunkwan University, and Kyunghee University. This study is meaningful in that this will set specific approaches for establishing various university areas’ environment improvement projects, while enabling the approaches to focus on specific aspects.